The rise of health and safety awareness at Lindström India

In 2022, the importance of the health & safety culture at Lindström was reinforced by acquiring ISO 45001 certificate for all business units globally and a successful safety observation mobile campaign that pushed the health & safety conversation. 

We have been operating in India for over 15 years and currently have 12 business units across the length and breadth of the country. Health & safety is naturally not a new initiative at Lindström India, but the systematic development of the related processes and procedures took a substantial leap last year.  

The overall operational responsibility for health & safety at Lindström India lies with Dhananjay Bhosekar, Health & Safety Manager. Addressing the matter of what changed the past year, Dhananjay shares, “there has been a massive focus on enhancing health & safety competencies in India by building dedicated committees, clarifying required and expected safety behaviour, clarifying risk awareness and preventive behaviour. These are Group-led programs, and a huge part of these initiatives is about deepening training, monitoring working conditions through practices like safety walks, and increasing safety observations through employee participation. Reporting is also a critical aspect that ties the efforts together and entails reporting all incidents, accidents and near misses in accordance with the reporting guidelines. This activity is followed up by thorough root cause analysis, investigation, and communication of the learnings drawn in the process. 

Embracing differences 

It is also essential to recognise that there are stark demographic differences when we consider implementing group-led health & safety programmes in India. Many complexities like developing infrastructures, literacy rate and prior understanding of health & safety topics, especially among textile care workers, need to be taken into account. A statement on these differences can be that road safety is one of the biggest concerns and accounts for many safety incidents in the country.   

Jayant Roy, Managing Director of Lindström India, is responsible for driving the health & safety initiatives and accountable for the overall safety performance at Lindström India. Roy believes that people and the communities our business touches are the most critical assets and that their safety is non-negotiable. ”We are in an emerging economy, and things move fast here. It is imperative that in an ever-evolving workplace, there is active employee participation on safety topics. It is also emphasised in the recently introduced ISO 45001 Occupational Health and Safety Management System, where employee activation and participation in safety decisions is one of the key concepts presented in the standard. Creating and managing a safety culture that looks beyond mere policies and procedures in India requires a different approach, as there is a lack of sincerity for these topics on a general level. We need to extend the awareness drives not just to our employees on the grassroots level but also their families and children, as consequential thinking is prevalent regarding safety” explains Roy. 

Further, regarding future plans, Roy shares that the focus would be to drive awareness continuously at all levels of the organisation.  

”Reaching everyone with awareness workshops and helping them regard safety as a personal asset is one of the primary goals. At the same time, we press ahead with the continuous improvement and long-term development of our existing programmes,” shares Roy.