How We Affect Employee and Contractor Safety

Many of our operations involve physical activity and heavy machinery, putting employees in situations with the potential for injury. In a dynamic, fast-paced work environment, it is important to pay close attention to safety at all times.

Agrium is committed to the health and safety of our employees, contractors, customers and neighbors, and the security of our employees, products and facilities. We promote business practices that respect the value of human life. Keeping our employees safe, healthy and secure is our highest priority. We believe our safety culture starts with organizational leaders and extends to all who work for Agrium.

What We’re Doing

At Agrium, we  are committed to the implementation of our Environment, Health, Safety and Security Management Systems at all levels of the organization. We conduct regular assessments at all Agrium locations to ensure conformance with our systems and compliance to applicable regulatory requirements.

Injuries / Training

To help prevent injuries, we require employees to report all incidents and near misses. Once we understand contributing factors, we take or implement corrective action to reduce the risk of injury or loss.

Select Agrium facilities employ SAFESTART, advanced safety awareness training, which teaches participants how to avoid behaviors that can cause them to make mistakes and errors. Telling employees to be careful is not enough. SAFESTART takes the mystery out of being careful by helping people recognize patterns that significantly increase the risk of what they are doing.

We conduct safety training at various levels: business unit leaders; facility-level leaders; site- specific; job-specific; and new hire orientation. Our safety awareness and training programs apply to employees and contractors equally, and we will continue to use all the tools at our disposal to reach our ultimate goal of zero workplace injuries.

In 2011, Agrium introduced the Tenets of Operation Program. The Tenets are ten fundamental rules and values that address considerations such as procedures, prevention, equipment operation, information and reporting. The Tenets are aimed at empowering and involving our employees to ensure safe operations at our facilities.

The Tenets of Operation are:

1. Perform hazard assessments and correct unsafe actions or conditions.
2. Verify energy isolations and use appropriate PPE.
3. Address abnormal conditions before proceeding.
4. Develop and use clear written procedures for all high risk, critical, or complex operations.
5. Report personal safety, process safety, environmental and near miss incidents immediately and implement corrective actions.
6. Operate equipment within design or environmental limits.
7. Operate with safety and environmental critical devices armed or follow the critical systems defeat process.
8. Involve people with expertise and first-hand knowledge in decisions that affect procedures and equipment.
9. Ensure process and maintenance information is current, accurate, and accessible.
10. Protect yourself, others and equipment from risk by understanding the situation before proceeding.

Read about our Safe Driving Policy here. (Link to story at back)

Contractor management

Agrium partners with its contractors to ensure alignment and commitment to achieving our goal of zero injuries. Agrium has a rigorous contractor review and qualification process to ensure that our contractors employ programs, practices and management systems required to meet or exceed regulatory requirements and support the type of work they perform. Agrium Wholesale implements a contractor performance improvement program:

• employing ISNetworld – to ensure consistent program review, validation, and contractor grading;
• performing contractor audits and post job evaluations;
• ensuring involvement in work planning and project execution;
• requiring participation in hazard recognition/control and job task observations; and
• establishing designated safety representatives for all contract companies.

Through these efforts and relationship building we have been able to significantly improve our performance and enhance our corporate safety culture.

Integrating New Operations

Our safety performance improvements are impressive given the fact that we have integrated several new acquisitions during the past few years. Companies joining Agrium are subject to the same high safety expectations that are applicable to the rest of the company.
To assist newly acquired companies in assimilating quickly and completely into Agrium’s safety culture, we:

• Communicate our safety standards and expectations on an on-going basis verbally and in writing to all new employees;
• Provide the newly acquired company with the tools necessary to ensure success, including management support, training and capital; and
• Monitor the newly acquired company on a regular basis to see whether additional assistance is needed to ensure a successful transition.

Process Safety

Process safety, targeted at managing hazardous materials, and the integrity of our equipment and operating systems, has long been a focus at Agrium. We have recently replicated best practices that were developed at our U.S. operations, at several of our facilities in other countries. Process safety audits are applied at risk-relevant manufacturing and distribution facilities across the company.

How We’re Doing

Our commitment to workplace audits, incident reporting and stewarding to annual performance improvement goals have helped us achieve declining employee injury rates. For example, our Redwater, Alberta operations set a safety record in 2011, reaching 4.96 million hours without a lost-time incident.

We did, however, experience two employee and two contractor fatalities over the course of 2010 and 2011. Following our investigations of these incidents, we shared the key learnings throughout the company in a concerted effort to avoid similar incidents in the future.

Our safety performance improvements are impressive given the fact that we have integrated several new acquisitions during the past few years. Companies joining Agrium are subject to the same high safety expectations that are applicable to the rest of the company.