At Lilly, ensuring our employees are safe and well is something we strive for every day. We have instituted many programs to prevent injuries and we continually strive to achieve better performance.
To ensure consistency, all of our global facilities follow and apply the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) Recording and Reporting Occupational Injuries and Illnesses Standards. We continuously track corporate data regarding accidents, illnesses, injuries, and analyze this data monthly.
The charts below demonstrate our performance, measured per 100 employees, on serious injury and illnesses and lost time cases, as defined by OSHA.
Our serious injury/illness rate remained essentially unchanged between 2003 and 2007, when we began to place additional emphasis on injury prevention. Since then, we have seen our serious injury and illness rate decrease from 1.44 injuries per 100 employees in 2007 to 1.17 injuries in 2008. We have set a goal of 0.70 injuries by the end of 2013, and we believe we are on track to meet our target.
Currently, we are lagging in our industry and our serious injury/illness rates rank in the lower quartile among our 13 pharmaceutical company peers.
On lost time cases – defined as injuries that are severe enough to require at least one shift away from work – our rate has been relatively constant from 2004 to 2008. While we have been working to reduce lost time injuries, we have been unable to lower them significantly. Our goal is to achieve a 50 percent reduction in lost time cases by the end of 2013.
Our lost time cases rank among the lower quartile among our pharmaceutical company peers.
Ergonomics
Ergonomics injuries are the leading cause of serious workplace injuries at Lilly. Ergonomics injuries typically result from repetitive motion activities or stress or strain to the body. Ergo Answers, a comprehensive program aimed at reducing ergonomic injuries at work, continues to be successfully implemented throughout the company. Ergo Answers includes training employees, raising employee and management awareness, conducting proactive ergonomic assessments, and reducing or eliminating ergonomic risks within Lilly facilities.
In 2008, Lilly reduced ergonomic injuries with a 32 percent decrease in serious ergonomic injuries down to an overall rate of 0.41 serious ergonomic injuries per 100 employees per year.
In 2008, we conducted more than 7,000 proactive workplace ergonomic assessments focused primarily on our administrative functions and manufacturing operations. In 2009, we continued to focus on ergonomics issues in all areas of the company, including our manufacturing operations, and our sales force. These particular areas account for the majority of our lost-time ergonomic injuries. New training and risk reduction programs that emphasize maintaining good ergonomics while driving and lifting materials in and out of vehicles have been initiated in our US and UK sales affiliates with plans to replicate these efforts in our worldwide affiliates. We have developed an intense approach to identifying and remediating large numbers of ergonomic risks in a way that will significantly reduce the risk of future ergonomic injuries. We intend to replicate this approach globally as part of our commitment to provide an injury free work place.
Motor Vehicle Safety
At Lilly, the number of work-related injuries due to motor vehicle accidents is significant. We are working to heighten awareness of motor vehicle safety and implement actions to reduce the number of injuries. Our Lilly Motor Vehicle Safety (MVS) program is the cornerstone for improvement worldwide. Our goal is to achieve a 50 percent reduction in collisions per million miles (CPMM) by 2013 compared with the baseline year of 2007.
Over the past four years, Lilly’s MVS program has concentrated on the top 10 global sales and marketing organizations. During this time, two of the affiliates – Canada and Spain – have reduced their CPMM by over 50 percent. However, these gains have been offset by an increased rate within the U.S. sales affiliate due to greater employee awareness of MVS and a consequent increase in collision reporting.
Our global fleet safety performance, measured in collisions per million miles, has been relatively flat since 2005. In response, our Global Marketing and Sales organization is embarking on a new strategy called hseDIRECTIONS for injury reduction and collision prevention in all affiliates worldwide. hseDIRECTIONS will emphasize expanded management commitment to MVS and behind-the-wheel training for employees.
