Promoting Employee Well-Being and Safety at IP

Oct 31, 2023 12:35 PM ET
workers in safety gear with arms on each others' shoulders and laughing

Originally published in International Paper's 2022 Sustainability Report

Our Approach

Our approach to fostering healthy people and communities covers internal imperatives — employee well-being; diversity and inclusion; and recruitment, development and retention — as well investing in the communities in which we live and work.

Promote employee well-being and safety

The health and safety of our people is our highest responsibility. We’re committed to achieving zero serious injuries for employees and contractors. We look out for each other to ensure everyone returns home safely every day.

At International Paper, we believe that every employee is a safety leader. So each of us must:

  • Maintain an active safety mindset
  • Anticipate and recognize hazards
  • Have the courage to intervene
  • Contribute to a learning culture to sustainably mitigate risk
  • We are all accountable for creating a safe workplace

On an enterprise level, our Life-changing Injury and Fatality Elimination (LIFE) program fosters a learning culture to advance an injury-free workplace. By focusing on five key areas of workplace risk, our goal is to eliminate serious injuries and achieve zero instances of injury.

We also continue to promote programs that focus on leading indicators, layers of protection and safe work observations. Our quarterly Global Operations Report, for example, relates safety leading indicators to all employees. With this data, our senior lead team can measure the effectiveness of our health and safety initiatives and allocate resources to areas that need improvement.

Our emphasis on employee safety extends to healthfulness. Reinforcing measures instituted in 2020, we expanded our COVID-19 response program to include mental healthcare, and we extended our tele-medicine benefit to include tele-counseling.

LIFE: Focused on five areas of workplace risk

  1. Slips, trips and falls
  2. Machine safeguarding
  3. Harmful substance exposure
  4. Motorized equipment accidents
  5. Driver safety

About International Paper

International Paper (NYSE: IP) is a global producer of planet-friendly packaging, pulp and other fiber-based products, and one of North America’s largest recyclers. Headquartered in Memphis, Tenn., we employ approximately 39,000 colleagues globally who are committed to creating what’s next. We serve customers worldwide, with manufacturing operations in North America, Latin America, North Africa and Europe. Net sales for 2022 were $21.2 billion. Additional information can be found by visiting InternationalPaper.com.

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