Health and safety

Husqvarna promotes high standards for health and safety, and this perspective guides continuous striving for improvement. Safety is evaluated regularly and incidents are used as a starting point for improvements to prevent future accidents.

Most accidents occur due to faulty use of machines or tools, but are seldom severe. All employees who need training to perform their work in a safe way receive regular health and safety training.

Husqvarna offers health care to its employees through on-site nurses or external occupational health services.

To further strengthen workplace safety, employees are trained in first aid and how to use fire equipment. Fire drills are held regularly.

Employee influence

The majority of Husqvarna sites have some kind of forum for employee - manager dialogue where health and safety aspects are evaluated. This also gives employees the opportunity to influence their workplace and its development.

Safety @ Work

The Safety @ Work project was launched in 2007 in the US, with the primary focus to reduce the number of work related accidents. Performance indicators were developed to further link accidents to business and thus integrate injury prevention with the business process. The performance indicators are used both to define goals for each individual site and to benchmark them with each other. Safety @ Work underlines the importance of investigating department specific incidents and production risks.

Three years into the project the number of documented injuries in the factories included in the project decreased by close to 50%. This results in lower costs, higher productivity and employee satisfaction.

In 2010 the project will be extended to China.