UN World Day of Health and Safety at Work
Safety and Health is a corner stone in our company culture and a key value behind Lantmännen Unibake’s success and further growth. Providing and ensuring a safe and healthy work environment is an important part of the way we do business.
Ensuring a safe and healthy environment is a responsibility that starts at each of our colleagues. In addition to the Lantmännen Group requirements including the Blue Audit Inspections and local legal requirements, Unibake wants to focus even more on the health, well-being and safety of our employees and leaders. We are conscious that to be successful with this, we depend on each other’s mindset and behaviors in every corner of our business.
On April 28th, the UN recognizes the World Day of Safety and Health at Work and we have taken this opportunity to talk with Sonja Admiraal Bentzen, CHRO of Lantmännen Unibake, about the Safety and Health culture we continuously develop at Unibake.
How important is Safety and Health in Unibake?
It is on the top of our agenda, we have a set mindset: everyone, everyday and everywhere we must think, feel and act safe. It is very crucial for us that we provide a safe workplace for our employees and that it’s something we don’t compromise on.
What are we talking about when we talk about a Safety and Health culture?
We are moving from a compliance level to a deep and cultural approach based on shared commitment. We want to reach a level of Safety and Health excellence where we have no accidents, people feel healthy and we support them in that way. Safety and Health is owned by everyone, we all take proactive responsibility for our own and for others safety. Overall, there is a common mindset about Safety and Health that is directly connected with our culture.
How do we involve our employees in building such a culture? How do you create a safety mindset in an organization as ours?
We relate Safety and Health to one of our well-known leadership tools that every employee knows. This is the consciousness about the connection between our thoughts, our feelings and our behaviors. Therefore, when we think about S&H in a positive and proactive way, we transmit that into our feelings and our actions. Everybody in our organization wants to do a good job, and we want everybody to do a good job in a safe way. We are all responsible for S&H and we have support, communication and training, but more important, we are all inspired to take ownership for our own and others safety.
Which aspects have changes in the S&H culture of Lantmännen Unibake this last year?
The pandemic has turned everything around and we have put strong focus on health. In fact, we have had that as a guiding principle and value; our people is the most important during the corona crisis.
After the experience with Corona, which is far from being over at the moment, how is Lantmännen Unibake anticipating and preparing responses to future crisis as such?
We take the learnings from this crisis, - act fast, think out of the box, communicate – and put the employees first. We were successful with this and we managed as a company to have an aligned approach throughout the organization with no hesitation.