To determine the necessary actions to address the negative impact of inadequate health and safety management, annual HSSE Plans are developed. The HSSE strategy is implemented through these annual plans and targets. Using a combined top-down and bottom-up process, 44 local annual HSSE plans are created and monitored centrally. For the material topic S1 Health, Safety & Well-Being, none of our actions exceeded our key action monetary threshold of EUR 5 mn, and therefore these data requirements have not been addressed. In 2024, we defined actions focused on preventive care and training, raising awareness, and promoting safety practices. OMV dedicates significant efforts and personnel to enhancing our health and safety management. This includes executing the actions outlined in the HSSE plans.
Preventive Care
Preventive Care is our proactive measure to address the negative material impact on our employees caused by inadequate occupational health and safety management. This is achieved by implementing a variety of initiatives and projects across the OMV Group. OMV maintains or works with a total of 45 medical units across all locations where we have operating facilities. To mitigate occupational health risks, our medical staff carry out specific preventive examinations in compliance with the legal regulations of the countries in which we operate. These examinations include blood tests for employees working with specific hazardous substances and hearing tests for employees exposed to noise. To track the effectiveness of these medical units, internal audits are conducted to ensure that the quality of the preventive examinations aligns with our Health Standard and the legal regulations of the countries where we operate.
At the Health Circle in Gänserndorf, Austria, employees gather regularly to address work-related health issues and create customized solutions in collaboration with the local health team. Local face-to-face health promotion sessions were able to take place in some countries, with the main topics including a breast cancer awareness campaign that continued in Romania and New Zealand and free and voluntary skin cancer screening, followed by the availability of an examination performed by a specialist doctor in the case of abnormalities.
Preventive examinations that are provided by the medical units at our sites are available to our own employees as well as to value chain workers. Additional health initiatives and awareness raising campaigns such as skin cancer screening are reserved for our own employees. This action is an ongoing process. Over the last few years, the Corporate Health and Learning departments have developed a new collaborative initiative to raise awareness of health issues. In 2024, webinars were held focusing on issues such as ideas for achieving a better work-life balance, while another was organized to discuss the promotion of mental health. The topic of mental health was addressed extensively in 2024, with several actions, interviews, several communication sessions, webinars and Q&A sessions, and industry health committees tackling this hot topic.
Training, Awareness Raising, and Safety Promotion
Training, awareness raising, and safety promotion activities are part of our preventive and enhancement measures, addressing the negative impact arising from inadequate occupational safety and health and safety management. They are provided on an ongoing basis and target all OMV employees.
OMV employees at all levels are regularly trained in their roles and responsibilities. Education and training are important for informing workers and managers about workplace hazards and controls, so they fully understand the hazards, eliminate, or mitigate the risks and work safely. Following the update and Group-wide alignment of our LSRs, we ran an intensive program of face-to-face rollout workshops led by line management to reach all employees and contractor employees. All staff are required to be familiar with the HSSE Policy, internal HSSE regulations, relevant legislation, and especially Life-Saving Rules. They actively contribute to and further develop HSSE awareness as part of our corporate culture, for example, by stopping and reporting unsafe or irresponsible acts and conditions and reporting any near misses, incidents, and non-compliance. Through these reports, we track the effectiveness of training, awareness-raising, and the promotion of safety practices.
Life-Saving Rules Safety Centers
In 2024, we rolled out and started implementing our new concept for practical training on our Life-Saving Rules for 20 operational locations. Contractor employees and our own employees receive practical training in the specially built safety training centers to act as a multiplier for safety on site. This helps improve the relationship between the workforce and management and encouraged safe behavior, leading to an overall positive impact at our sites. A major focus in the Safety Centers is increasing safety awareness and knowledge through practical training to avoid serious incidents. Safety programs with the aim of consolidating and improving safety performance were implemented with a wide variety of contractors. To underline their importance, they are supported and managed by senior management as sponsors. This is an ongoing initiative.