Prosperity for people

Health gains an expanded agenda

In addition to taking precautions against the spread of the coronavirus, efforts to promote the mental health of employees and to maintain a balance between personal and professional life were intensified in 2022. Topics related to mental, physical, and social health, including suicide prevention, were disseminated in lectures and campaigns, and were included on the agendas of various forums in the different Klabin units, as part of the Viver Bem Program's initiatives. 

The greatest challenges lie in providing knowledge and support to leadership to recognize potential accident-causing behaviors within their teams. To this end, the Company has been reinforcing training, qualification and engagement actions. 

A member of the Federal Government's Citizen Company Program, Klabin offers parental leave to all employees, without discrimination of gender, and sexual orientation, among others, also applicable to cases of adoption, with 20 days of paternity leave and 180 days of maternity leave. 

In 2022, 697 employees took advantage of the benefit, totaling 39,380 days of leave. The rates of return to work after the end of the leave were 100% in both cases. The retention rates, which indicate the length of time employees remain with the company after returning to work, were 89% and 79% for men and women, respectively. These indicators are important references for people management at Klabin. 

The guidelines and procedures of Klabin's Occupational Health and Safety Management System (OHSMS) are focused on preventing losses and improving processes on an ongoing basis to protect the lives, health, and physical well-being of people. This system is supported by the dissemination of the health and safety culture. 

The Life Protection Policy, launched in 2022 and communicated to the entire Company, serves as an important guide in the pursuit of a mature safety culture. The document highlighted non-negotiable values and expected performance by all in Safety, as well as concepts and their differences, such as error and violation, and their correlation with the environment's vulnerability to potential accidents, providing a basis for secure decisions. 

In this regard, Klabin has encouraged managers to recognize the importance of creating a work environment in which employees feel comfortable discussing any issue with leadership, such as unsafe conditions, and to promote an understanding of psychological safety within the Company, a process that presents a challenge. .

Indicators

Managing safety indicators takes into account the relationship between accident rates and the company's capacity to manage risks in its daily routine. The analysis from this perspective provides greater clarity on the effectiveness of the actions and their impact on the results achieved. 

In 2022, for the fourth year in a row, there was a decrease in the frequency rate of accidents resulting in time off among direct and indirect employees, reaching  1.34, and in the severity rate for the third consecutive year, wich reached a rate of 55. Both reached historical records. The consistency of the indicator demonstrates that efforts to manage safety-related risks have yielded results. 

Among direct employees, the frequency rate of accidents resulting in time off was 1.59, a year-over-year reduction of 23% in 2022; among indirect employees, this frequency rate of 1.11 represented a y-o-y reduction of 15%. 

However, Klabin regrettably recorded six lives changed (high-consequence work-related injuries, excluding fatalities) in 2022, which highlights that there are still challenges regarding the promotion of safer and more secure work environments and reinforces the need for the Company to remain focused on its purpose of safety and protection of life. 

Risk management and safety governance 

Continuous improvement is applied daily to established processes, such as risk analysis tools and work permits, which is essential for achieving consistent results. 

Recently, processes have been established to enhance the governance of the topic. One of them is the establishment of a dedicated coordination for logistics operations, which has already been able to achieve closer ties with transport companies, which is a major step towards engaging suppliers in safety. 

Unlike occupational safety, process safety seeks to enhance risk management capabilities through processes, management of critical elements, and risk mitigation in more sensitive plants. With this, the company has been intensifying its risk assessments and has established a committee to address fire risks, enabling it to make progress in prevention and equipment readiness for emergency response at Klabin.