Safe and healthy workplace

Koskisen is only as strong as its personnel. It is important for us to provide our employees with a pleasant and safe workplace where each person can feel that their job is as meaningful as possible. The components of meaningful work are a safe work environment, excellent working conditions, fair treatment, continuous development of expertise and looking after employee well-being.

At year-end 2021, Koskisen had 909 employees (892 in 2020). The increase focussed especially on plywood production as we were able to increase our production volumes thanks to a favourable market outlook. 

In Finland, Koskisen has 776 employees, most of whom commute to work from nearby communities or surrounding municipalities.

At yes 2021 in Poland, Koskisen employees total 72, and in Russia 57. Furthermore, there are some 20 Koskisen employees working in sales in different countries around the world.

We want to create a safe, pleasant, healthy and sustainable work community. We focus especially on the ergonomics of heavy work stages, we require our employees to use protective equipment at production facilities, and we ensure safe movement in mill areas. We promote work ability through comprehensive occupational health care services, early support and support for mental and physical work ability.

We encourage our employees to develop occupational safety by rewarding them for providing good safety initiatives. In 2021, we submitted 108 safety initiatives, 54 of which were rewarded. Safety observations amounted to 3,620, of which 1,536 were positive. We also provide training for employees and jointly identify areas in need of development in the work environment.

We have a certified ISO 45001 system for managing occupational safety. 

We provide a safe workplace

Ensuring and developing safety at work is the responsibility of each and every one of us in our day-to-day operations. We need to continuously refine our working methods and our attitudes in order to reach the goal of zero accidents. However, we know that the goal is attainable, and our current and future systematic OHS work will help us get there.

Our systematic safety work involves a broad focus on both proactive and corrective safety work. The goal of our proactive safety work is to prevent hazardous situations, deviations and workplace accidents. This involves e.g. risk assessment, safety observations and continuous personnel training. Corrective safety work involves immediately removing from the work environment observed and identified hazards and systematically reviewing what has caused them.

We measure safety in terms of both proactive and corrective safety work. The key indicators in proactive safety work include, for instance, the number of safety observations and the extent of the workplace inspections carried out. In corrective safety work, we monitor factors such as the speed and impact of the implemented measures, among other things. Our key indicator in workplace accidents is Lost Time Accidents (LTA¹) monitoring, which counts accidents causing one or more days of absence per million working hours. LTA¹ is a globally standardised form of monitoring that enables clear and transparent occupational safety monitoring.

Overall well-being is important

We monitor well-being at work through the preconditions of work, functionality of the work community, supervisor work, competence and renewal as well as functional ability and personal resources. 

In Järvelä, our employees have access to diverse occupational health care services produced by Pihlajalinna on our own premises, while our Hirvensalmi employees’ occupational health care services are located in Mikkeli. Our occupational health care provider knows the work and working conditions inside out and, as a result, is well positioned to support employees’ work ability. We have access to an occupational physical therapist, mental health services and a work psychologist.  

We encourage our employees to take care of their health. We support our employees’ efforts to quit smoking by paying for 50% of the detoxification medicine costs. We offer a Smartum benefit for sports, culture and massage. We also organise instructor-led exercise breaks, and offer nutritional guidance, exercise classes and gym instruction at our own gym. We support our employees’ healthy eating at the workplace together with two canteen entrepreneurs. Joint leisure time events were not organised due to the Covid-19 pandemic. 

We conduct an employee satisfaction survey every year. The results of the survey are reviewed by department and team, and they are used to pick a topic that the department will then begin to develop. Human resources take part in reviewing the results of the survey and monitors the outcome.

In 2021, the response rate was 63 % (72% in 2020). On a scale from 1 to 5, the average score was 3.71 (3.69 in 2020). The result is largely better than the industry’s reference data. Our long-term goal for the response rate is 80%, and for employee satisfaction an overall score of 3.75. We work to achieve these goals on a Group-wide level. 

Our employees’ attendance percentage was 96.06% (95.94 in 2020). Our target is 97%. The result has continuously improved, despite the Covid-19 pandemic. The biggest reason for absences due to illness is musculoskeletal diseases.

Safe and healthy workplace

Our occupational safety and health activities meet the statutory requirements as a minimum. Efforts are made to identify and prevent risks related to human health and safety, to the products and their use and to the company’s assets. 

The company creates the conditions for a safe workplace. Every employee is responsible for his or her own safety and also looks after the safety of his or her colleagues and the company’s assets. All employees and employee representative are guaranteed an opportunity to raise safety-related issues and to participate in the work of committees on occupational safety and health.

Safety is actively managed, and as a key safety indicator, we follow the accident rate (LTA1), for which we set annual, continuously tighter targets. Our goal is zero accidents.

As part of our safety improvement efforts, we use safety tools whose results are assessed for all functions on a monthly basis. 

The tools extensively cover all the areas of our operations:

• Safety instructions
• Risk management
• Accident investigation
• Safety observation
• Management safety rounds
• Housekeeping
• Daily safety and communication
• Safety training
• Health and well-being at work
• Safety rewards
• ELMERI safety rounds