HEALTH & SAFETY

Investor Relations

Our Focus on Employee Health and Safety

EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT – A KEY COMPONENT

Safety first. Always. And, it starts with me.

Our safety motto says it all. We are relentlessly focused on safety. Through best practice sharing and an emphasis on leading indicators, we are strengthening our safety culture of learning and building a safer work environment. By putting our efforts into behaviors like safety training, safety walks, safety committee engagement, risk recognition and mitigation, and mistake and error proofing through poka yokes and near miss reporting, we’re moving the needle on our lagging indicators – that rear view look at what happened, like recordables and incident rates.

When it comes to safety, we believe that engagement from every employee is critical. Our Safety Committees at each division help us increase engagement, while emphasizing our proactive commitment to safety. Near miss reports, risk assessments, job safety analyses and weekly safety audits/walks are some of the ways we contribute to our safety culture of learning and growth. While we diligently manage safety policies, programs, and training on an ongoing basis, we believe our employee-driven safety culture has the biggest impact.

Our Occupational Health and Safety performance includes tracking occupational injuries/illnesses, and work-related fatalities.

• Fatality Rate: 0.0

• Poka Yokes (Safety Solutions) Completed: 160 (+98% from 2021)

• Safety Performance Awards: 15

• Near Misses Reported & Investigated for Best Practice Sharing: 259 (+59% from 2021)

• Safety Actions Completed Across the Company: 6,575 (57% increase over 2021)

• Divisions with ZERO OSAH Recordables:14 (up 4 from 2021)

• Total Recordable Incident Rate: 3.8 (26% Improvement from 2021)
  

Olympic Steel is dedicated to improving our safety culture and performance. To achieve this in 2022, we initiated many efforts based on the analysis of our 2021 safety data, including:

• CEO Safety Engagement Tour at divisions/facilities (Safety Road Show).

• Engaged a 3rd party consultant to perform site visits and provide a comprehensive safety benchmarking and cultural assessment.

• Partnered with a crane OEM to develop new safety training for our Operations and Maintenance Teams and to specifically address training and maintenance related to lifting and rigging equipment.

• Partnered with a new 24/7 nurse triage medical service to quickly provide employee care and document and manage non-emergent work-related injuries.

• Initiated a bimonthly, year-long focus on hand safety to address an area of high potential for accidents and injuries.
  

In addition to the special programs and initiatives listed above, we continued to focus on fundamentals through our baseline Safety Actions Plans executed at each of our processing facilities:

• Safety Committees or Safety Teams to meet monthly

• Review and update all Job Safety Analyses (JSAs)

• Review and update all Lock-Out, Tag-Out (LOTO) policies and machine-specific procedures

• Complete all required Safety Training

• Conduct weekly (at a minimum) Safety / 5S / Housekeeping Walks

• Complete a Dock Safety or Traffic Safety Improvement Project

• Complete Poka Yoke Safety Improvement Activities

• Document Near Miss Events
  

In addition, our employees attend safety training on a monthly basis, as needed or required. This training includes: Electrical Safety, Lock Out Tag Out, Crane Safety, Lifting and Rigging Equipment, Confined Spaces, First Aid and Bloodborne Pathogens, Fire Prevention and Emergency Action Plan, Hearing Conservation, Hand Safety, Personal Protective Equipment requirements, Working Around Mobile Equipment, and Walking and Working Surfaces, as well as Workplace Violence.

Not only is safety a top priority for employees, but we also extend our health and safety policies to suppliers, visitors and contractors.

And, our relentless focus on safety is getting recognized! Click here a list of Safety recognition Olympic Steel has earned. See the talented team of Safety Professionals leading our efforts and their extensive list of credentials Click here

Olympic Steel, Inc. is a proud member of the National Safety Council

We’re proud to support Safety learning and best practice sharing across our industry as part of the Metals Service Center Institute (MSCI) Safety Council. Tony Dominic, our Director – Safety, Health & Environment, serves on the Council of behalf of Olympic Steel and was a featured presenter at the 2022 MSCI Safety Conference, where we spoke on “Crane Safety: Duty Cycles, Required Inspections and Hand Safety.”