At Cafosa we are celebrating a new record: last week we reached 500 consecutive days without accidents causing sick leave at our Barcelona (Santiga) production facility!
While this is a great feat, it is really all about adding one more day each day in our commitment to workplace Health and Safety.
How did we get here?
We had been coming a long way already by 2019 in managing daily operations, but really it was 2020 that challenged us into stepping up and dealing with the unpredicted and unpredictable.
From the very beginning of the Covid-19 outburst in Spain we created a special internal taskforce in charge of planning, organizing and decision making regarding the health and safety of all Cafosa workers. Measures were put into place swiftly to ensure continuity of operations, while at the same time making sure employees are safe and feel comfortable coming to work.
What measures were implemented due to the pandemic?
- New health & safety protocols for fixed and temp staff
- Revised disinfection and cleaning protocols
- New procedures for contractors
- Adjustments in the work spaces both on the plant floor and in the offices to enable social distancing and minimizing risks
- Staff training for awareness and compliance with the new measures and protocols
- Etc.
What else happened in 2020?
Apart from the global pandemic, Cafosa has a strong safety awareness embedded in the company culture and there are ongoing assessments and action plans to improve safety of regular daily operations. For example, we’ve modified our previous ‘Near Miss’ system, which enabled us to go from identifying and reporting 260 new potential risks in 2019 to 414 in 2020. This way we make sure to solve potential problems in a proactive and timely manner, thus avoiding future hazardous situations.
In addition to systems improvement, protocols and internal measures, in 2020 Cafosa had an additional challenge, as improvement works at the production plant were planned over a 5 week period. This implied more than 14.000 hours of work by external staff, 30-40 different external companies and providers, 50-60 contractors and high risk tasks and work being done such as plasma cutting, LO-TO proceedings and working at height. All of it was done without any safety incidents or accidents.
Where to now?
In 2021 we are committed to keep improving our safety standards daily in line with our credo and the positive dynamic we’ve shown thus far.
As Cafosa, we are very proud of each and every associate for their commitment, determination, discipline and proactivity, all of which made us reach our main objective, namely that
“each associate should return home the same way or even better than when they came in to work”