Caring
Creating a great place to work
A safe and inclusive culture where each employee is treated with respect are the foundation of a workplace that attracts and retains the best people.
Health and safety (H&S) is a top priority at Alfa Laval. We are continuously working to improve our H&S performance and monitor this closely. A new H&S policy was launched during the year, and it emphasizes our vision: “We return home safely – every day”. The extensive safety programme launched in 2022 continued during the year focusing on leadership and safety culture.
Targets and progress
Alfa Laval has updated its targets for 2023-2025 and the Group target is to be below 1.5 in LTIFR (“lost-time injury frequency rate”) before the end of 2025 with a milestone of 2.2 at the end of 2023. The vision and long-term target remains. In 2023, the total number of LTIs increased to 90 (87) with 3,650 (2,707) lost working days, and an LTIFR of 2.45 (2.60). This means the milestone for the LTIFR reduction target was not met, even if significant progress was made. Continued focus and work is needed to fulfill our targets and long-term aspirations.
In August, one of our employees was tragically involved in a fatal traffic accident while crossing the street in Singapore during a service assignment. The fatality is included in the number of LTIs. Other lost time injuries were mainly related to slips, trips and falls, lifting and use of personal protective equipment.
Good health and well-being
The pandemic put additional focus on health and well-being, and Alfa Laval continued that work during 2023. Several pilots were initiated in a broader and slightly more structured way of working with health and wellbeing. An evaluation of the pilot projects and new working procedures will be done as the pilots are concluded.
During the year, Alfa Laval conducted a global employee survey, and health and well-being was an important topic in the survey. More information on the survey is presented later in this chapter.
Reducing the use of hazardous chemicals
To reduce the use of hazardous chemicals is important for the health, safety and well-being of Alfa Laval employees. This is a prioritized focus area and part of the continuous improvement work for all our sites. The substitution of hazardous substances is guided by internal procedures and the Alfa Laval Group Restricted Substance List, which is the primary tool for us to control the use of hazardous chemical substances.
This year we actively phased out all chemical products reported in 2023 containing unauthorized substances, which are substances listed as banned on the Alfa Laval Group Restricted Substance List.
Improved safety in China
Several initiatives were initiated in 2023 to increase safety awareness, involve management teams, and strengthen the safety performance and culture in China.
All three manufacturing sites conducted Job Safety Analysis updates for all working posts to increase risk identification and effective risk communication. All employees were encouraged to report risks in the workplace, which resulted in more than 6,455 hazard and risk observations during the first ten months. Increased focus on follow-up resulted in a closing rate of 92 percent.
Participation in Gemba Walk and more than 651 “I Care Walk & Talks” were initiated to increase leadership involvement and the activities resulted in over 405 risk observations by the management teams.
Other initiatives to increase safety awareness in the workplace included the development of a checklist with safety rules for high-risk operations, a hand safety manual and distribution of hand safety posters to all operators to improve employee hand safety consciousness.
Since 2022, a New Employee Safety Training program is in place to secure that before starting any work, new employees participate in 24 hours of training on site, workshop and team levels.
The initiatives greatly improved the safety trend for lost time injuries (LTI) and minor injuries (MI) in JiangYin, Kunshan and Qingdao compared to the same period last year.
2021: 6 LTI with 368 lost days and 506 MI
2022: 3 LTI with 438 lost days and 172 MI
2023: 2 LTI with 84 lost days and 46 MI
To secure the increased safety performance and culture over time, the safety leadership initiatives and employee empowerment will continue and be actively followed-up in a new safety KPI chart. Safety awards will be issued to further encourage employee involvement, safety improvement and reporting.
Continued focus on safety performance
Health and Safety priorities
During the year, Alfa Laval has had a continued high focus on the three main areas of safety: people (safe culture), safe technology, and safe processes.
Safe culture
Promoting behavioural change is necessary to create a culture focused on safety in the workplace, which concerns all employees. Managers have a particularly important role in leading the development towards a better safety culture and acting as safety role models. All employees must also take responsibility for their own health and safety.
During the year, work with behavioural aspects continued and focused on some significant areas. For example, a method called Last Minute Risk Assessment (LMRA) was implemented, intended to increase a person’s safety awareness just before he/she starts to work on a task and thereby reduces the risk for accidents. The methodology aims to create a safety culture where the employees are constantly assessing their workplace and their own activities to detect hazards as a natural part of their daily work.
The initiative “I Care Walk & Talk” continued during the year. It is focused on leaders and other key stakeholders for them to demonstrate visible leadership on the shopfloor and talk with employees about safe and unsafe behaviours.
Towards the end of the year, we took the next step for safety and an updated safety strategy was prepared and approved. Focus is to ensure operational excellence with a few selected tools and methods. It also emphasizes the work with safety culture, and more specifically leadership. This next step creates a platform for us to achieve our ambitious targets in this area.
Safe technology and equipment
An important part of Alfa Laval’s safety work is to ensure safe machines and equipment. Risk assessments are therefore carried out regularly to identify hazards and measures to reduce risks.
Safe processes
A new H&S policy was launched during the year and implemented in the organization. Alfa Laval has also continued to implement relevant major hazard standards and there has been a particular focus on working in confined spaces.
*Excluding fatality
Commitment to respect human rights
Accelerating success for our customers, people and planet is at the heart of everything we do. Our respect for human rights – including the International Bill of Human Rights and the core conventions of the International Labour Organization – is embedded in our organization and expressed in our Business Principles.
We work actively to avoid causing or contributing to negative human rights impacts by following recommended due diligence frameworks, such as the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights and the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises.
Embedding human rights in our company
In 2022, we embarked on a project to identify improvement areas in our human rights due diligence processes, focusing on own operations and first tier suppliers. Based on an analysis of salient human rights risks, a roadmap was developed, and key internal stakeholders were identified to drive prioritized activities.
During 2023, we have taken a number of actions to further embed human rights in the way we do things. Two key milestones were the launch of Alfa Laval’s Human Rights Policy and Human Rights Report. New trainings on human rights have also been developed and introduced this year.
The Human Rights Policy sets the commitments on human rights with a special focus on health and safety, freedom of association, freedom of expression, discrimination and harassment, child labour, forced labour and anti-bribery and anti-corruption.
The Human Rights Report captures how human rights due diligence is conducted in Alfa Laval. This highlights our way of working to identify and assess human rights risks, prevent and mitigate negative impacts, provide remediation where necessary and monitor and report our progress.
Human Rights Due Diligence Framework
Building an inclusive culture
Inclusion and diversity is high on the agenda at Alfa Laval and our journey towards an inclusive and diverse workplace continued during 2023, focusing on some key activities.
Alfa Laval’s vision is to be recognized as an inclusive workplace where diversity is essential to achieve the company’s objectives. The composition of our people should reflect the diversity of the markets where we operate and society at large.
We promote a safe, inclusive culture both within our company and in our relationships with external partners. Alfa Laval’s workplace demonstrates a set of behaviours and unique values that make people feel valued, respected, and involved. They reach their full potential based on competence, experience and performance. All traits and elements people bring to the workplace help to build strong and diverse teams.
Ambitions
Our ambitions towards 2025 are:
35%
employees to be women
25%
managers to be women
<70%
homogeneity in senior management team
Towards an inclusive and diverse workplace
Progress on inclusion and diversity targets
In 2023, Alfa Laval had women comprising 22 (21) percent of our total employee base and 22 (22) percent women representation in our managerial population, which is still well below our target levels. For new hires, the proportion of women was 33 (34) percent in the white-collared talent pool, showing our commitment to increase the representation of women in the company.
Being an international company, Alfa Laval aims to be a highly diverse and inclusive organization. In 2023, homogeneity in senior management teams, from a gender and citizenship (nationality) perspective, reached 71 (70) percent, marginally above the target. In the annual engagement survey ‘VOICE’, the dimension of inclusive leaders was scored 72 by the employees, which represents a noticeable increase from last year (69).
Local I&D action plans
There is no single recipe in making the change to become a truly inclusive and diverse workplace, which is why Alfa Laval has built its Inclusion and Diversity (I&D) strategy on a long list of initiatives: awareness and change management, education and training, culture and leadership, people processes, local activities, targets and data, and communication.
Alfa Laval continues the I&D journey by building awareness in the organization through workshops, initiatives, forums and networks. For example, in 2023, I&D workshops were held at the sites of San Bonifacio (Italy), Ronneby (Sweden), Richmond (US) and JiangYin (China) targeting the managerial population.
Another initiative called “Unleashing HER Power” has been driven by Alfa Laval North East Asia to support the attraction, development and retention of female talents. The program is intended to help female employees achieve self-driven development by sharing, listening ad interacting.
In Sweden, Alfa Laval has initiated a partnership with Teknikkvinnor, a Swedish network reaching over 35,000 women with a technical or engineering education. The current focus is to gain further understanding of how diversity contributes to company success, why inclusion is important to create a diverse environment, and strengthen our managers’ ability to have inclusive communication.
This partnership also opens the door for Alfa Laval to use Teknikkvinnor’s network to advertise and be seen as an employer who promotes and values diversity.
This is just a selection of examples and there are many more local initiatives that are driven by the business, HR, and/or employees themselves, while receiving full support from top management.
Learning
During 2023, Alfa Laval continued its education and training activities for leaders and employees globally in themes such as “Becoming an inclusive leader”, “Acting inclusively” and “Overcoming implicit bias”. All employees are encouraged to take the “Global inclusive course”, and “Becoming an inclusive leader” is aimed at managers on all levels throughout the company.
In September 2023, the North Europe cluster held a Learning Festival week and one of the sessions was specifically about “Living Diversity Together”.
In 2023 trainings were supported by Alfa Laval’s Learning Portal, eLearning tools, and through Teams and live sessions in several business units.
Networks
Diversity networks and employee resource groups have been initiated by employees and supported by Alfa Laval throughout the company. Examples include “W@lfa Women network” that started in Tumba in 2017 and in 2023 has been expanded to our sites at Lund, Eskilstuna, and Ronneby in Sweden. The “Young@Alfa Laval” network has members in Lund and Tumba.
Communications
Communications is crucial in keeping I&D high on the agenda and keeping up the momentum by showcasing initiatives and underlining the importance of having an inclusive and diverse workplace among leaders and employees in the whole organization.
Communication activities in 2023 focused on sharing to the broader audience the many initiatives via testimonials from participants in trainings, workshops, networks and to showcase local initiatives.
Listening
In 2023, Alfa Laval conducted its employee engagement survey “VOICE” to allow all employees to make themselves heard and contribute to making Alfa Laval an even more inclusive and attractive workplace. This year as many as 86 percent of Alfa Laval employees completed the survey and the score on engagement was 78 (78).