Safety

Our overall safety performance is shown in the table below.

We have global Health, Safety, Environment and Security policies, directives and standards in place to ensure we protect people, assets, the environment, our business and society at large.

Our 2010–2011 HSE strategy identified safety management as a key improvement issue for the next five years. Our ambition for 2015 is to perform in the top quartile of our safety peer group.

Management leadership, behavior based improvement processes and operational discipline are the building blocks to changing culture and achieving our ambitions. Safety information is presented in our internal quarterly reports and reviewed by our Executive Committee during the performance review cycles. Safety improvement programs for both occupational and process safety are in place at our businesses and related ambitions have been set for 2015.

Although we have seen an improvement in the safety performance for employees and supervised contractors, we have not entirely met our 2011 ambition: TRR ambition was 3.0 vs 3.1 actual performance. It’s a similar situation in terms of the performance of our independent contractors. One of the reasons for this might be the delay we have encountered in the full implementation of our behavior based safety (BBS) processes. Specifically, implementation in our paint stores operations required a dedicated and tailor-made approach. This is under development and will be finalized and rolled out in 2012 in North America, followed by Europe.