Our strategy is to improve safety performance by driving behaviour change through celebrating successes and awareness. It is our safety goal to change mindsets from “My behavior is driven by not wanting to get caught” and “My behavior is driven so I don’t get hurt” to “My behavior is driven so that no one gets hurt”.
Culture change through what we celebrate: We have MTO Safety achievement certificates for excellence, which is awarded to business units that have achieved 12 months without a loss time injury. Of the 35 21 business sites (processing operations and plantations), we have four 10 sites who have achieved this remarkable achievement. Longmore Sawmill recently celebrated 36 months without lost time injury. Our Research Site are on 19 years without a lost time injury.
To help ensure the safety of our teams, every plantation employee is required to attend health and safety courses. Each team has a first aider and a safety representative. Safety representatives meet on a regular basis to ensure that safety is prioritised at MTO.
Meet Buddy, our safety mascot! Buddy tours all over MTO to help reinforce our safety messages!
Our safety culture is summarised in our big five:
• Safety first
• Zero tolerance
• Safety starts with me
• I am my Buddy’s keeper
• Arrive alive, go home safely
The MTO Group uses the metric of Loss Time Injury Frequency (LTIFR) as an indication of safety performance. The industry acceptable standard is an LTIFR of 3.0. MTO Forestry is as at the end of October 2022 @ 0.96 we are in the ball park of excellent. So when we talk about improving our safety performance it’s in the context of improving on excellence.
