Ravne na Koroškem, Wednesday, 22 March 2017 – With today's event and the announcement of the winners of the »Working Safely, Staying Healthy« campaign at the Ravne location, the SIJ Group concluded the year-round activities to raise awareness of its employees on the safety and health at work and announced the intensive continuation of the campaign by upgrading the current activities and introducing new ones.
In the recent years the SIJ Group has recorded a downward trend of work-related accidents, with which they are pursuing the global trends of the steel industry, where according to the World Steel Association the number of accidents has decreased by 65 percent in the past ten years. With today's event and the announcement of the winners of the »Working Safely, Staying Healthy« campaign at the Ravne location, the SIJ Group concluded the year-round campaign to raise awareness of its employees on the safety and health at work and announced its intensive continuation by upgrading the current activities and introducing new ones, with a special emphasis on April, when on the 28th we celebrate the World Day for Safety and Health at Work.
In the Ravne companies of the SIJ Group, 8 production programmes from the companies SIJ Metal Ravne and SIJ Ravne Systems competed for victory. They were awarded points for the absence of accidents and achieving the target percentage of sick leave. Among the SIJ Group's Carinthian workers, the best performers came from the Maintenance programme of SIJ Metal Ravne, where they have been accident-free for 466 days. For this extraordinary success the workers received 1,800 points or 1,800 euros. The award will be spent on sports and socialising, while the workers dedicated an equal amount to the local Disability Sports Association Samorastnik and personally handed the check to the president of the association, Matjaž Majdič, at today’s event.
Bojan Uršej, a professional in SIJ Metal Ravne Maintenance, is proud of the team's success and made the following comment after they performed Minutes for Safety as part of the event, with which the managers daily check and encourage workers to strictly observe safety measures: »We are extremely proud of the zero (0) accidents in 2016. We achieved this result with the safe work of all 107 employees despite being the ones who often perform the especially hazardous work at height, e.g. maintenance of lifts and cranes.« The managing director of SIJ Metal Ravne Andrej Gradišnik emphasised the meaning of joint campaigns to raise awareness of the employees and encourage a culture of safe work: »In the SIJ Group, which encompasses companies with work-intensive processes and demanding technological ones, the safety and health at work is of the highest priority. I am glad that our employees are reacting positively to the campaign »Working Safely, Staying Healthy« and strive to make their plant the example of smart and good work behaviour, as well as an example to others.«
Campaign 2017 - employees as the key ambassadors of the project
Immediately after the final events and the declaration of the winners of the first year-round campaign, the activities of the »Working Safely, Staying Healthy« campaign, which is of extreme importance to SIJ group, will continue. In addition to upgrading the previous year's activities, a special emphasis this year will be on the personal responsibility of the employees. The workers who suffered a work-related injury in the previous years will play an important role in these efforts and will serve as ambassadors to raise awareness with their colleagues on the importance of strict adherence to the provided rules and measures for the safe work of every individual and all the staff. As part of the campaign, the SIJ Group will also provide the installation of defibrillators in the following months and make sure that the staff at the Ravne, Jesenice, and Ljubljana locations will be trained to handle them and to save precious lives.