Because our people are our most valuable resource, maintaining a safe and healthy work environment is and will remain a top priority at Ball. Through employee commitment and the use of various safety tools, we continue to improve our safety performance and strive to reach our long-term vision of zero work-related incidents. The health and safety of employees is everyone’s responsibility.
More Than Just Numbers
For us, our safety metrics represent more than just numbers. They exemplify the health and wellbeing of our employees. We reduced our rolling average Total Recordable Incident Rate (TRIR, recordable incidents per 200,000 hours worked) from 2017-2020 by 31% compared to the 2017 baseline. Through our safety efforts, Ball achieved its 2020 goal of reducing the three-year rolling average TRIR by 25%.
At year-end 2020, 32 of our manufacturing locations worldwide reported zero recordable accidents for the year. Progress towards zero recordable accidents is driven by continuous improvement of employee engagement programs, results of long-term safety culture change and structured projects that included behavior-based safety and standardization of work procedures.
Ball strives to be a leader among can manufacturers and in the manufacturing industry as a whole. We continue to report incident rates (0.9 in 2010) consistently lower than the manufacturing (3.6) and metal can manufacturing (3.9) industry as reported by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics for 2016. We attribute this success to our continued focus on machine guarding, near-miss reporting, behavior-based safety and targeted projects at facilities. Going forward, we will expand our safety focus to further prioritize hearing loss and lacerations.
Committed to Continuous Improvement
Because management commitment and active employee engagement play a vital role in achieving our safety goal — to reduce our TRIR by 25% between 2020-2030 — safety performance is communicated monthly to senior-level leadership and quarterly to executive management to track our progress and ensure accountability.
Our health and safety efforts are focused on continuous improvement and we regularly check the effectiveness of plant programs through internal audits. To support our safety culture, elements of our health and safety management system include policies, planning, implementation and operation, checking and corrective action, and management review. Ball’s global health and safety policy and safety management systems are based on the international Occupational Health and Safety management system standard OHSAS 18001.
Behavior-Based Safety
Eighty percent of all work-related accidents include a behavioral component. Since 2005, we have used behavior-based safety (BBS) to minimize unsafe behaviors by proactively focusing on behaviors that may lead to incidents. We enlist employees at all levels to monitor safe and unsafe behaviors and to report their observations. Plants deploying BBS routinely analyze observations made by all employees and implement corrective measures. The long-term use of BBS programs has greatly contributed to safety performance improvement. We continue to update our BBS process to ensure we prevent injuries effectively and engage our employees to maintain a safe workplace.
Establishing a Culture Dedicated to Safety
While affecting day-to-day employee activities and behavior can be a challenge, creating and maintaining a safety-focused culture is a priority at Ball. To establish a foundation of safe practices, it is important to proactively empower, support and engage employees. We provide employees with opportunities to participate actively in addressing and eliminating safety issues to support our safety culture.
Through a long-term safety culture change process, we are enabling employees to take ownership of their safety and the safety of others. Safety culture change addresses the hidden beliefs, norms and assumptions that govern behavior with the goal of changing norms that undermine safe behaviors.
While we have addressed safety culture using BBS in our plants over the last decade, we began implementing a more targeted process in seven of our North American packaging plants since 2011. Plant employees participate in a survey to assess their plant’s current safety culture, then they review and prioritize the findings and recommendations. Instead of implementing programs developed by upper management, voluntary grassroots teams are trained and empowered to develop solutions and tools to continuously improve safety performance.
Through these grassroots activities, motivated leaders step up and lead the change, which is very positive because it helps to identify and develop talent at Ball. For example, in our Wallkill, New York, plant, employees suggested that salaried employees become more involved on the shop floor. This challenge was addressed by increasing the presence of salaried employees in the plant and improving communication.
Health and Wellbeing
At Ball Corporation, investing in our people has been and continues to be a critical part of our business. One way Ball does this is by investing in the health and wellbeing of our employees and their families. Our health and wellbeing programs are centered on one goal: to help our employees and their family members become healthier versions of themselves. Healthy people have a better quality of life and tend to be more productive in their work, which represents a win-win result for our employees, their families and for Ball.
We recognize that a comprehensive wellbeing program consists of four distinct pillars – physical, emotional, financial and social wellbeing. To encourage our employees to be healthy in all four aspects of their wellbeing, Ball offers resources and solutions in each of these areas. We also review our global wellbeing solutions at least annually to identify, measure and solve for any wellbeing needs to ensure that we offer useful wellbeing resources to support healthy lifestyles for our employees.
Below are features of our wellbeing benefits program, which may vary based upon position, location and other eligibility criteria:
Physical Wellbeing
- Healthcare plans
- Telemedicine and other digital wellbeing solutions
- Wellness Fairs
- Smoking cessation and weight control programs
Emotional Wellbeing
- Employee Assistance Program (EAP)
- Mental health / substance abuse programs
Financial Wellbeing
- Retirement and savings benefits
- Employee Stock Purchase Plan (ESPP) with company match
- Insurance coverage (Life, AD&D and Disability)
- Educational Assistance Program
Social Wellbeing
- Flexible work arrangements, including remote and part-time
- Paid holidays and vacation
- Paid Parental Leave
- Onsite Wellness Rooms
- Child and elder care support program
- Adoption assistance
- Matching gifts and volunteer rewards program
- Ball Resource Groups
Ball is committed to invest in our employees' overall wellbeing, resulting in a happy, healthy and highly engaged workforce.