Ceylon Tobacco Company PLC (CTC) recently marked its 15th consecutive year with zero accidents, an extraordinary feat achieved through its sheer commitment towards employee safety.
Adapting a foolproof system ensuring the highest levels of safety at work, CTC implements its safety system in line with the BAT Group’s integrated EHS (Environment, Health and Safety) guidelines. These guidelines encompass a comprehensive suite of policies to govern health and safety from every aspect. The company has deployed a cross-functional EHS Steering Committee which convenes a meeting every quarter for monitoring health and safety performance parameters whilst identifying areas for continuous improvement. Accordingly, the employees are required to undergo health and safety related training on a regular basis.
Under the stringent safety guidelines, CTC incorporates cutting edge technology to implement a number of health and safety drives across the organisation. One such practice themed ‘NEARMISS Reporting’, encourages employees to report potential safety risks and hazards via a mobile phone platform, where the EHS Manager performs follow-ups on each report. Launched in 2017, the NEARMISS mobile application provides a convenient platform for reporting potential risks, greatly boosting overall efficiency. Furthermore, operational level employees are also assigned with quarterly targets for incident reporting, creating a conducive environment to elevate safety awareness across all platforms. CTC has not only extended its EHS practices across its supply chain, but also took steps to introduce the NEARMISS reporting system to its third party logistics partner.
In parallel to its safety procedures, CTC places utmost importance on health and nutritional factors of its employees. Accordingly, the company has established a fully-fledged dedicated Health and Wellness Centre exclusively to serve its employees. The centre is committed to offering personalised advice to all employees on nutrition, healthy living and exercise regimes towards maintaining optimal health at all times.
Taking the safety standards up one notch, CTC’s ‘Pulsar’ program encourages exemplary safety behavior through mutual observation amongst peers. This not only reinforces positive behaviour, but also creates sustainability in the practice of positive behaviour throughout the organization. The successful implementation of the Pulsar initiative has increased its trained observers to 72, and even hiked the observation rate to 90%. At present, CTC has extended the Pulsar initiative across all of its factories, Colombo warehouses a.
Steering a host of mechanisms with proactive engagement of its employees, CTC has paved the way towards a culture of safety and awareness across its organisation. These drives include monthly safety walks, Health and Safety briefings for new employees in addition to EHS Moments at all staff meetings. Moreover, the safety equipment such as helmets and lightweight shoes provided for its field force and factory employees are in full compliance with the international safety standards.
Being a trailblazer in the corporate realm, CTC has constantly maintained superior standards, recording the highest health and safety standard amongst its counterparts in the BAT Group. CTC is also one of the three BAT companies in the Asia Pacific region to achieve its 15th consecutive injury free year, which was recorded in March 2018.
As a responsible organization, CTC is committed to providing a completely safe working environment for all of its stakeholders including employees and suppliers, and will continue to uphold its comprehensive safety measures on par with the global safety standards.