Be Your Best: Our Keys to a Safer, Healthier and Happier Schneider Electric

More than 180 years of excellence

At Schneider, safety is everyone’s responsibility.  Nurturing a safe, clean and orderly work environment is both our collective responsibility and a function of every Schneider employee, partner, and affiliate.  Our story encompasses generations of people who have transformed our company, and the world, for almost two centuries.  Today, our heritage has empowered us to innovate at every level, enabling us to become leaders in digital transformation.

Safe, reliable & sustainable solutions

Schneider Electric is a world leader in connecting technologies and solutions to manage energy and process in ways that are safe, reliable, efficient and sustainable. The Group invests in R&D in order to sustain innovation and differentiation, with a strong commitment to offer safety.  We believe that electricity along with water, food, and shelter, is a basic human right.  We contribute to this ambition through our Schneider Electric foundation and our Access to Energy initiatives to provide electrical innovations to ensure Life is On for everyone, everywhere at every moment.  With the help of local communities, residents, and customers, we bring safe, clean, sustainable electricity to remote communities all over the world.

In addition, within our urban and suburban environments, we provide smart-grid technologies and have a passion for renewable and sustainable sources to help ensure electrical supply for future generations.  We work diligently with governments, regulators, suppliers, partners and customers to fulfill our commitment to be the leader in safe, reliable products. These products detect faults to prevent electrical events which can threaten the life and well-being of others.  In addition, we offer professional services to clients worldwide including electrical safety training and safety analysis such as thermographic studies and Electrical Hazard Analysis to detect and prevent an electrical incident from occurring.

Sustainable workplace safety as a business practice

More than a principle, our Safety Culture is a core business directive and everyday practice. This is also true for our suppliers, contractors, and partners.  Through these actions, we continuously aspire to the highest standards of safety excellence. Our Safety culture begins with each employee’s commitment to personal SAFE-First Checks.  SAFE First is our personal reminder to pause and reflect on our own safety before beginning any task.  To be SAFE, you must analyze your Self, your Activity, the Facility, and the Environment.

In addition, we commit to upholding our 5 safety guiding principles:

1. Qualified personnel (We only perform work that we are trained and qualified to do)
2. Unsafe? We stop work! (We empower employees to be responsible for their health & safety)
3. We raise safety opportunities (We received over 160k proactive safety opportunities in 2018)
4. We resolve and share opportunities (We start meetings with safety at all levels)
5. We care for each other (Leaders nurture an environment that is caring and engaging for all)

Health and well-being exemplified

Our global well-being program takes a holistic view of a person’s well-being across 4 dimensions including: Physical, Mental, Emotional and Social. We leverage a network of passionate Well-Being Champions and more than 200 volunteers involved in project teams across the globe, to carry out a holistic approach to well-being. Our program is rooted in these 5 pillars:

1. Health & wellness (healthy behaviors and lifestyles)
2. Flexibility at work (working in flexible ways for better work-life integration)
3. Workplace (smart, engaging and energizing workplaces)
4. Leaders (compassionate leaders who inspire people to adopt healthy behaviors)
5. Organizational culture (building a culture of well-being).

We fervently deploy various well-being training programs for our employees, with face-to-face and virtual sessions. More than 30,000 employees have been trained through a diversified offer including such topics as recognizing stress and burn-out, nutrition, the power of sleep, how appreciation creates value, well- being in a digital world, and more. In addition, we evaluate workplace conditions, with a special emphasis on ergonomics.  For the last three years, we have run dedicated campaigns, including training materials, videos, stretching techniques, and promotional materials to raise the awareness of ergonomics in the workplace.  We also have ergonomic experts across facilities and a full scorecard as part of our Schneider Electric Performance system and our Environment Health and Safety Management system.

Future ambitions

We are proud to be a leader in safety performance achieving benchmark levels (<1.0 Medical Incident rate, based on 1 million hours worked) that’s 2 to 3 times better than many other leaders in the electrical manufacturing industry, based on externally reported and independently verified Safety metrics. This has enabled us to prevent more than 450 medical incidents (i.e. Incidents requiring the intervention of a Doctor) since 2013. Though we enjoy the benefits of a healthy, safe and well-balanced workforce, we are not fully satisfied until we achieve our goal of zero work-related medical incident. This is an ambition that we share with every employee, partner, and customer that we serve.  Together with the United Nations we celebrate our efforts and the journey ahead to further workplace health and safety worldwide.