Health and safety

Ocab should be a safe workplace with a focus on building a strong culture, including accident prevention initiatives. It is important for us to promote the health of our employees in various ways.

A safe working environment is one of our highest priorities, as we are a labour-intensive business in an industry with identified health and safety risks. Risks occur at temporary workplaces, in traffic on the way to and from customer assignments and in physical work activities, for example.

Inadequate safety management can lead to accidents, sick leave and poor safety, which in turn can lead to increased costs, staff shortages and a weakened brand.

Targets

  • < 10 %

    Reduce sickness absence to less than 10%

  • < 10

    Occupational injury rate lower than 10

  • 0

    Build a good health and safety culture with zero serious accidents

*LTIF rate for Ocab is the number of occupational injuries (resulting in >1 days away from work) divided by the employee total hours worked

Occupational injuries

We work actively to create a safety culture based on accident prevention, training in risky activities and proactive risk observations. Our continuous improvements are based on reported deviations, events and complaints.

These efforts have yielded some positive results, such as less sick leave, even though the number of accidents and occupational injuries has risen from 9 to 12 and is therefore higher than desired.

The health promotion and prevention initiatives have started to have an impact in some areas, but in the future, we expect them to result in shorter lead times and increased profitability as well.

Risk observations

Our conclusion is that the number of accidents remains at a relatively high level. Reporting of risk observations has increased from 116 to 320, which indicates a better understanding of the matter and that training programmes have started producing results.

However, we want to increase the reporting of risk observations to proactively improve safety. To ensure movement in a positive direction, the Board and management have intensified follow-ups of accidents, incidents, risk observations and deviations through uniform monthly reporting, in which regions and countries can also be compared to each other in order to find best practices and synergies.

Absenteeism

Results and initiatives are evaluated against defined goals in order to assess the organisation’s status and ensure that we are evolving in line with our overall strategy.

By clarifying and continuously monitoring our goals, we have generated greater engagement and more improvements in our operations:

  • Regular health reviews

  • Safety week 

  • Close cooperation with the occupational health service 

  • Working meetings involving managers, leaders and employees to identify activities to improve health and safety.

*Absenteeism is the total number of days on sickness leave taken by employees, expressed as a percentage of the total number of available working/calendar days in the last calendar year.

Clear structure for health and safety

We have a quality management system to effectively improve our operating processes, including health and safety management. Occupational health and safety legislation and systematic health and safety management form the basis for how we plan and manage our work.

By means of interdepartmental collaboration, we want to involve our employees and managers. The goal for 2025 is to certify our occupational health and safety activities under ISO 45001 to meet our own and our stakeholders’ requirements. In 2024, we are adapting our health and safety management to meet the current ISO standards and requirements.

All employees have access to the Group’s quality management system via digital tools, which also make it possible to report suggestions for improvement. The Group has safety committees with representatives of both the employer and employees. The safety committee meets regularly throughout the year to assess and improve our work environment.

As an employer, we are responsible for all our employees and contractors, so we have clear safety induction procedures and guidelines. If one of our employees feels unsafe or uncomfortable with a task, it is always possible to refrain from doing it. Employees always have the right to refuse special restoration measures that may be psychologically stressful.

Initiatives

  • Safety week

    In Sweden, a safety week was initiated in October 2023 to highlight the importance of safety and health, educate employees and permit discussion.

    The safety week led to a 300% increase in the number of reported incidents compared to an average week, which is a positive response. A decision has been made to repeat this initiative annually.

    With increased reporting, we predict that statistics will evolve to a transparent, true and fair level, creating the conditions for informed decisions.

  • Occupational health service

    Working closely with the occupational health service, we conduct and offer health checks, training, counselling and crisis support, and investigation support to prevent ill health.

    The occupational health service offers regular medical check-ups for all employees. Experts are consulted in occupational health and safety investigations.

    Contact details for the occupational health service are available to all employees on our intranet.

  • Regular risk assessments

    In customer assignments, risk assessments are carried out before and during the project to avoid known risks. A new risk assessment must be conducted when changing activities. Projects are always concluded with quality assurance by means of self-inspection. Risk assessments are conducted in the ordinary course of business prior to changes.

    With regular risk checks, we can identify risk areas and take action at an early stage to counteract any negative impact. We carry out exposure measurements in our operations to evaluate which tasks are most risky in the long term.

  • Preventive healthcare

    Ocab offers all its employees a preventive healthcare contribution to promote employee health. We also support and encourage various health activities and races.

  • Rehabilitation policy

    We have a rehabilitation policy and establish a rehabilitation plan for individual employees in the event of injury or illness. Our operational policy, rehabilitation policy and traffic policy cover health and safety.

Read more about what we do in each area