Safety is our number one priority

We never compromise on the safety and wellbeing of our people. At Metsä Group, safety at work is an integral part of day-to-day management.

Aiming for zero accidents

The focus of our safety operations is on preventive work that allows us to avoid dangerous situations. Everyone is responsible for following safety instructions, making observations about defects and shortcomings, and eliminating hazards.

At Metsä Group, safety at work is managed and monitored group-wide, which improves transparency and promotes the sharing of best practices among units. Our goals and occupational safety indicators encourage us to develop our operations continuously.

We provide all of our employees and subcontractors working at our mills with induction training in safe ways of working. Our long-term goal is to have a work environment with zero accidents.

We are continuously seeking new ways to improve safety at work. Every employee’s personal commitment to safe work methods shows in the results as well as in the occupational safety culture becoming firmly established throughout the organisation. Professionals put safety first.

Careers

Safety at work

A good place to work

At Metsä Group, promoting and maintaining wellbeing at work and working capacity are based on preventive action. Our goal is to identify factors that threaten to compromise our employees’ working capacity as early as possible, take systematic measures in a timely manner and maintain good health throughout people’s careers.

Wellbeing

Wellbeing

Our wellbeing-at-work services are provided in collaboration with the management, HR and supervisors.

Wellbeing at work is the foundation for success, both for individual employees and the company as a whole. Wellbeing is always a personal experience consisting of many things: meaningful tasks, smoothly running working days, and feeling eager to come to work.

Wellbeing is affected not only by your physical condition, but also by the fact that you have the necessary skills and competences to carry out your duties along with good management, supervisors and colleagues, and that due consideration has been given to occupational safety matters. At a personal level, wellbeing is affected by illness, ageing and life changes. Each and every one of us is responsible for attending to our personal wellbeing.

When all of the elements are in place and the rules are clear, you will enjoy your work and be successful. This is what we mean by promoting wellbeing. Our goal is that all Metsä Group employees are able to do their work well and be productive.
Healthy at work

Healthy at work

We believe that healthy, motivated and satisfied employees are one of our success factors. We use a shared, Group-wide model to support our employees' working capacity. This model includes early support, assessments and personal working capacity plans. We seek to create a caring workplace community and ensure that all employees are treated equally.

We provide our supervisors with tools and training to identify any situations that potentially compromise wellbeing at work, and we encourage our employees to proactively take care of their health by providing information about how to improve recovery, the effects of shift work and ergonomics, among other things. Our occupational healthcare services are uniform and comprehensive, enabling extensive preventive services and effective and quick examination of diseases. We also support free-time activities, such as exercise and culture, in many ways.

We monitor absences and accidents through Group-wide goals and reporting. Local labour protection committees play an important role in providing training and promoting safety at work. Our local labour protection committees cover all of our employees in our key countries of operation.

Our goal is to keep our sickness absence rate below 3 per cent, which is the lowest level in Europe.

The purpose of the actions supporting working capacity is to:

• Secure health and prevent absences due to sickness
• Proactively identify work disability risks
• Enhance early support at the workplace and establish our operating model
• Carry out effective, correctly targeted measures based on proactive identification.
• Effectively reduce costs related to work disability and sickness absences
Personal working capacity plan

Personal working capacity plan

If we detect that an employee is exposed to a health risk that is known to cause sickness absences and reduced working capacity if the risk is realised, we will prepare a personal health programme for the employee that mitigates or even eliminates the risk. Reduced working capacity or work disability can be assessed and predicted up to ten years in advance. A personal working capacity plan can include training, work arrangements and medical measures, for example.

The plan is prepared in cooperation with the employee. As a result of our proactive, performance-based operating model, sickness absences have decreased by more than half, which is also reflected in sickness absence costs.

Aiming for zero accidents

Read more

Safety at work

A good place to work

Wellbeing

Healthy at work

Personal working capacity plan