OREANDA-NEWS. October 14, 2011. Metinvest has become the first company in Ukraine and the only in Eastern Europe to have its efforts in the field of occupational safety improvement highly commended by the World Steel Association (worldsteel). Metinvest received one of the four awards for the Best Occupational Safety Improvement Project. Implementation of the project resulted in a 19% reduction in lost-time injuries at steelmaking facilities of Metinvest.

This year, the expert jury of the Worldsteel has considered 22 projects submitted by the member companies. Worldsteel recognized four member companies: Metinvest, Tata Steel Europe, Gerdau and NatSteel for excellence in their safety and health programmes. The companies demonstrated a commitment to the international industrial safety principles against the three key criteria: their implemented programs 1) meet the Worldsteel’s health and safety principles, 2) are able demonstrate a positive impact upon safety metrics, and 3) can be easily applied to the other member companies.

Metinvest launched its Safety Culture Change Project in the second half of 2009 at the steelmaking facilities of the Group with the introduction of a set of corporate safety standards. To change its safety culture, Metinvest recognised the importance of training, investing in training facilities and developing recently retired managers as internal trainers. This approach gained “the world’s best practice” appraisal in McKinsey’s analytical report “Building the Future: Solving the Social Problems through a Business Strategy”. Currently 53 people are engaged at Metinvest’s enterprises as the internal trainers. During 2009-2010 more than 8,000 people were trained in the best labor safety practices (64,890 man-hours). As of October 2011 the number of the trained employees of the company has exceeded 19,000.

"Minimization of production-related traumatism is one of the fundamental goals of our Strategy. Guided by international industrial safety principles, we are doing our best to utilize the innovative approaches to the employees training, implement the most advanced methods and practices, — noted Igor Syry, Metinvest’s CEO – Being involved as a Worldsteel’s member in exchange of experience allows us not only attaining improvements, but do so within the shortest possible time and the best possible way".