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Occupational Health & Safety
Safety Starts at the Top
Our commitment to safety begins with our Chairman and CEO and permeates the entire company. Our Behavior-Based Safety program establishes a global structure to promote open discussions with management and employees regarding work-related hazards and safety issues. We communicate safety expectations through CEO town hall meetings as well as monthly environmental, health and safety (EHS) meetings at both the facility- and service-organization levels. These meetings raise awareness of safety risks and preventative measures while providing a channel through which employees can share best practices.
Key Stats
73,273
Number of COVID-specific inspections conducted in 2020
86%
Of employees that say the company is committed to employee safety in 2020
30%
Decrease in our lost-time incident rate between 2020 and 2019
Occupational Health and Safety Strategy
When it comes to safety, our goal is clear: Zero injuries. Zero incidents.
Prioritizing our employees’ health and safety is right for our people and right for our business. Improved employee engagement, retention and productivity result in reduced turnover and health care costs.
Our Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) strategy is to build a data-centric, safety-focused culture. Safety metrics help us evaluate our progress toward our goals, identify gaps and shape our OHS efforts.
We have a 2030 goal to achieve and maintain a world-class safety performance, which we define as a lost-time incident rate of 0.06 and a total recordable incident rate of 0.60. As we undertake a new decade of sustainability goals, we remain firmly committed to putting the best minds and technology to work to maintain a safe work environment for our employees.
In 2020, we reduced our lost-time incident rate (LTIR) by 30% and our total recordable incident rate (TRIR) by 8%. We also maintained a zero occupational illness frequency rate. We had a lost-time injury rate of 0.07 for employees and 0.05 for contractors.
We provide employees with the tools and knowledge they need to perform their jobs safely. Our EHS auditing program exceeds regulatory requirements and includes our internal EHS management system requirements.
2020 required us to pivot to a virtual audit program, and we completed six virtual audits of our manufacturing facilities and service regions. This ensured consistent expectations across the enterprise. Read more in the Environmental, Health and Safety Management section.
Another area of continued focus is ergonomics awareness and reducing manual material handling, eliminating postural problems and reducing repetitiveness along production lines. For example, through our 100 Days of Safety Campaign, we expanded a pilot program to multiple service regions that targets service technicians and is aimed at overall wellness and enhancing strength and mobility of key body parts. Some of the results of this voluntary program included: an 81% increase in range of motion of hamstrings and a 48% increase in range of motion for upper body mobility.
Through a data-driven approach to maintaining a safety-focused and zero-incident culture, we identify trends and areas for improvement. Using quantitative metrics and collecting qualitative feedback from employees allows us to assess our current performance, understand where there are areas for improvement and inform our future OHS strategies.
A Year Like No Other
The COVID-19 pandemic required us to pivot to COVID-related risks and ensure our mitigation efforts were followed. Our team performed 73,273 COVID inspections in 2020. We pulled back to a small, essential-only workforce at our factories for two weeks to implement COVID-specific requirements like barriers at workstations, social distancing, active screening and adding sanitizer stations. Other protocols included: travel and visitor restrictions, required face coverings, daily self-assessment questionnaires and increased disinfection of high-touch areas. The support and engagement of every Trane Technologies employee made this possible.
Occupational Health and Safety Data
|
Total recordable incident rate (per 200,000 hours worked)
|
0.79
|
|
Lost time incident rate (per 200,000 hours worked)
|
0.07
|
|
Employee lost time frequency rate (per million hours worked)
|
0.38
|
|
Contractor lost-time frequency rate (per million hours worked)
|
0.24
|
|
Employee occupational illness frequency rate (per million hours worked)
|
0
|
|
Work-related fatalities
|
0
|
|
Total hours worked (among employees and supervised employee contractors)
|
72,019,125
|
|
|
2020
|
2019
|
|---|---|---|
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Lost Time Incident Rate (number of Lost time Incidents per million hours worked)
|
0.37
|
.048
|
Injury and Illness Prevention Focus Areas
- Expanding our internal audit process to include all Environment Health and Safety (EHS) management system elements with a focus on high-risk elements
- Continuing to mature our Behavior-Based Safety (BBS) program
- Growing our ergonomics program and aggressively reducing risk factors at targeted workstations and within our service populations
- Embracing a continuous improvement mindset by developing and implementing strategies to address identified gaps