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ACCO Brands Corp. America’s Safest Company Winner

Oct. 27, 2011

“ACCO Brands has fostered a culture where safety is incorporated into how we operate in our offices, manufacturing facilities and distribution centers,” says Safety and Environmental Affairs Director James Edwards, CSP, ARM.

Sandy Smith,

Laura Walter

Employees at ACCO Brands Corp. have no doubt that safe performance matters to company leaders; the senior management team – including Chairman and CEO Bob Keller, President Boris Elisman and Senior Vice President David Kaput – periodically visit manufacturing and distribution locations to review location performance, tour the operation and meet with
facility employees.

During these meetings and facility tours, senior managers reinforce their commitment to excellence in safety performance both in informal discussions with employees on the floor during the tour and in formal. meetings with the facility management team where the location’s safety performance is reviewed in detail. In addition, Keller and Elisman attend all global lost-time injury accident review meetings held by local management teams.

“ACCO Brands has fostered a culture where safety is incorporated into how we operate in our offices, manufacturing facilities and distribution centers,” says Safety and Environmental Affairs Director James Edwards, CSP, ARM. “Through our teammate involvement, training and safety communication programs, we have empowered< all employees to ensure their workplace is safe. This begins during a new employee’s onboarding and continues throughout the entire employment cycle. We have continued to make improvements in lowering our injury rates and increasing our annual audit scores, but will not be satisfied until we are at zero injuries.”

He says the company is proud of its global CESMP (Comprehensive Environmental & Safety Management Plan), which is based on compliance and best management practices that ACCO has implemented at all of its locations globally. The plan consists of eight elements:
1. Teammate Involvement
2. Recordkeeping and Documentation
3. Hazard Assessment, Prevention and Control
4. Injury / Illness Investigations
5. Medical Management
6. Training and Education
7. Environmental
8. Measurement

Within this plan, 70 action items are divided among the eight elements. Each location is audited annually for compliance. The audit team consists of Edwards and an EHS manager from a different facility. This audit includes employee interviews (from all levels of the organization), a detailed review of written programs and training records and an extensive walkthrough to analyze physical and behavioral safety on the floor. Typically, an audit takes 3 days to conduct from start to closing meeting.

Audits are scored using a score sheet (CLICK HERE TO VIEW), and each location’s score is tallied and communicated to the organization. The audit score combined with the location injury rates is used to calculate a ranking of all locations. This information is communicated throughout the organization on a monthly basis. “This audit focuses on the proactive steps that each location takes to prevent injuries in the workplace,” says Edwards. “This has created some good-natured competition among our audited facilities to try and perform best on the annual audit which has resulted in us making great strides in all areas of safety performance. As employees take pride in their performance ranking and the recognition that goes along with it, we have obtained broad buy-in on our CESMP.

ACCO Brands accepting their awards at the American Safest Company awards ceremony at The Ritten House in Philadelphia, PA.