For us nothing is more important than the safety and health of people who work in the steel industry. The global steel industry has made great strides in injury reduction over the past few decades. This is evident from statistics reported by member companies.
The annual safety and health data collection has completed its 19th year since its commencement in 2006. Two years ago, this report was made publicly accessible, demonstrating our commitment to transparent reporting and our alignment with global sustainability initiatives.
Please refer to worldsteel’s Safety and health in the steel industry data report 2025 published today on worldsteel Day for Safety and Health, to see our industry’s overall safety and health journey and our current position.
Continuously enhancing approaches to understand the human mindset have led to a better understanding of the interactions between people and their environments. Combined with technological advancements, this has enabled companies to improve their systems and controls.
Companies are moving beyond compliance and enforcement of safety rules towards preventive risk management and human factor.
Today, we see some of our leading members embracing the next generation approaches in safety and health management like human and organisational performance (HOP), actively engaging with workers (including contractors), learning from past experiences (good and bad) to build systems’ capacity to fail safely and focusing on health and wellbeing.
These practices are consistently demonstrated by leading industry members and are regularly highlighted in worldsteel’s annual Safety and Health Excellence Recognition Programme.
It is therefore paramount that worldsteel’s principles incorporate this evolving understanding of safety and health management. With this in mind, and guidance from worldsteel’s Safety and Health Committee (SHCO), worldsteel is planning to refresh and republish our safety and health principles and definitions guidance book.
Along with management practices, safety and health reporting frameworks must continue to evolve to accurately reflect the realities of our operations and workforce.
One of our key challenges is to keep our reporting frameworks up to date, ensuring that the data we collect is reliable and effective in helping members make well-informed decisions, regardless of where they are on their journey.
This includes expanding our focus beyond lost time injury frequency rate, onto total injury frequency rate and high potential events (potential serious injuries, fatalities or catastrophic events).
As the Chair of worldsteel’s Safety and Health Committee (SHCO), I encourage my colleagues to keep actively listening to workers, learn from past experiences and drive continuous improvement within their organisations.
I am confident that this will further strengthen our efforts to ensure safe and healthy workplaces for all our people.