Occupational Health and Industrial Safety

We strive to eliminate workplace fatalities and work hard on involving Company employees, managers at all levels, and on-site contractors in safety matters.

Severstal strives to become the best company in Russia by key safety performance indicators, and to achieve this goal, we use international best practices and work methodologies, improve our employee safety trainings, and motivate our employees never to turn a blind eye to safety violations.

This Policy applies to all businesses and divisions of Severstal.

Health and Safety Policy

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Policy and Governance

Improvement of occupational safety is a key performance indicator for Severstal.

In 2020, our key assets, including Cherepovets Steel Mill, Severstal Metiz, Vorkutaugol, Karelsky Okatysh, Olcon, Yakovlevsky Mine and Severstal Distribution (Latvia), successfully achieved the new ISO 45001 certification. These assets represent approximately 79% of our employees. Izhora Pipe Mill, Severstal Vtorchermet and Severstal Distribution (Cherepovets) are scheduled for certification in 2021.

New Safety Strategy

In 2020 Severstal adopted a new Occupational Health and Industrial Safety Strategy that received approval from our CEO.

Five Main Steps of the New Safety Strategy

Focus on fatal risks

Increasing manageability of TOP-10 fatal risks and potential fatalities

Review our approaches to internal assurance

Internal assurance to be focused primarily on fatal risk management assurance in line with corporate standard

Revise internal investigation process

• All incidents are to be analysed as a combination of three contributors: Technical, Organisational (Procedural) and Behavioural

• All reportable incidents are to be assessed by a corporate Risk Assessment Matrix. Internal investigation process must be applied to both incidents resulted in injuries and to incidents with high potential to cause injury or fatality

Learn lessons from incidents

Focus on identifying systematic, organisational causes of incidents using modern analytic methods

Reinforce communications

• All internal communications to be organised as per the principle: Right information in right time to right people

• Structured information based on: risk type, lessons learnt from previous incidents, successful practices of risk control. This information to be accessible by those responsible for organising safety at work

• Communications targeting shopfloor workers: clear instructions of what actions are required to operate safely

Injury prevention initiatives

Training

Our occupational health and industrial safety trainings comply with requirements of Russian federal laws and use corporate methodologies and occupational safety tools. All our educational events are focused on promoting a culture of safe behaviours based on personal commitment, accountability, and active involvement of all Severstal employees in mitigation of health and safety risks.

Number of employees trained in 2020

Occupational health

Industrial safety

Managing hazards and creating a safe environment

As a part of hazard management, we analyse injuries, including micro injuries and near misses, and identify and manage risks. All our business units implemented Hazard Identification, Safe Environment and Targeted Questionnaires tools that allow identifying potential hazards, evaluating the probability of their materialisation, and manage them, all while involving our workers in addressing the safety issues.

The company also actively implements innovative technologies (computer vision, control systems, etc.). This work is focused in three areas:

Prevention of direct safety violation by employees
Prevention of employee presence in dangerous areas (hazard mitigation)
Monitoring employees' personal condition and prevention of harards resulting from its deterioration

Increasing staff involvement in occupational safety matters

All businesses of Severstal have employee feedback monitoring systems in place for safety matters. Information from different sources is stored in a central registry to ensure timely responses to newly identified problems. Everyone can review proposals, and managers can follow up on their implementation.

Supply Chain Responsibility

All on-site contractors must comply with Severstal safety requirements. In 2018 we organised occupational safety testing for 357 line managers employed by of Cherepovets Steel Mill contractors; of those 152 managers received classroom training due to the failing result of their first test. In 2018 we introduced voluntary corporate occupational safety certification for our contractors.

Results of injury prevention initiatives

We measure the efficiency of our occupational health and industrial safety initiatives using a ten-year trend in the reduction of workplace injuries.

Over the past ten years, number of injuries reduced by a factor of 2.5 , while LTIFR improved — from 1,33 to 0,65.

In 2020 we did not meet our injury reduction targets, and our difference with 2019 actuals was 3%. Olcon improved its performance slightly (from 0.63 to 0.62), while Russian Steel, Vorkutaugol and Karelsky Okatysh remained at the previous level. The lowest LTIFR was achieved in Severstal Russian Steel and Severstal Metiz (0.41 and 0.46 respectively). LTIFR across Severstal was 0.65 among our employees, and 0.7 among consolidated workforce inclusive of our contractors.