
Ensuring the safety and health of our employees, contractors and suppliers is essential if we are to respect their most fundamental human rights; without a meaningful commitment to respecting the rights of those with whom we interact, we will have no social or political licence to operate.
As with all our activities this year, our safety performance was affected by the five-month strike at our Rustenburg operations. This period had both positive and negative impacts on our progress in advancing our safety and health initiatives. While many of our planned initiatives were necessarily put on hold until production stability resumed and people returned to work, the period was used effectively to focus on enhancing our safety standards and procedures. Our commitment to safety also informed aspects of our response to the strike, with the entire Rustenburg operation being suspended throughout the five-month period in order to protect the safety and security of our employees who faced the risk of violence and intimidation.
Our safety strategy seeks to develop a culture of safety within the organisation such that we can achieve our vision of zero harm. The strategy was developed following external (DuPont) and internal reviews of our safety systems and culture, and an analysis of the root causes of fatal, reportable and lost-time incidents.
The strategy seeks to change the safety culture throughout the Group from the traditional measured culture of dependence to independence, and ultimately to interdependence. In our dependent culture, although there is an acceptance of the need for safe practices, these are generally only followed when effective supervision is present and demands it. In an independent culture, every employee is committed to safe working practices, taking clear responsibility for their own actions. In the interdependent culture that we are striving for, there is the added focus of helping others to adopt good safety practice.
As outlined in the diagram below, our safety strategy has three main pillars, each of which is underpinned by an accompanying set of action plans.