We place the highest priority on the safety and health of our workforce and the people in the communities where we operate, on the environment, and on the reliability and efficiency of our operations.
Our Operational Excellence Management System (OEMS) focuses on leadership accountability and on a management system process that is integrated into our business planning. It also integrates a comprehensive set of expectations for operational excellence to achieve world-class health, environment, safety, reliability and efficiency performance.
In 2007, Chevron focused on continued implementation of our OEMS worldwide. In addition, for the 3rd year in a row, we conducted a review of serious incidents to learn from these events and improve the safety, reliability, and environmental performance of our operations. We adopted two new corporate standards to further reduce injuries and illness among our workforce — Fitness for Duty and Occupational Hygiene — and initiated a cardiovascular health program for our employees.
We created a Motor Vehicle Safety Center of Excellence to improve driving safety within the company, and continued our Arrive Alive community motor vehicle safety programs. We also created an Incident Investigation and Learning Center of Excellence to improve our investigations and to learn as much as possible to prevent future incidents. And we expanded our efforts to provide health and safety benefits to the communities where we operate through programs to combat HIV/AIDS and malaria, and, in some locations, supported community clinics.
Safety Performance
We remain committed to reducing all incidents to zero. The Total Recordable Incident Rate of our workforce decreased by 17 percent compared with 2006, and the Days Away From Work Rate decreased by 22 percent during the same period. The frequency of lost-time incidents has declined significantly over the past five years by more than 71 percent.
Every Chevron facility strives for outstanding safety performance. Our Zero Is Attainable awards are granted quarterly to locations that complete 1 million hours or 1,000 days worked with no workforce Days Away From Work incidents and no fatalities. In 2007, 89 work groups worldwide received this award.
Reducing Employee Injuries and Illness
Programs to support a safe, healthy and reliable workplace are an important part of our efforts to reduce all incidents to zero. In the last year, the programs we established included:
- Safe Work Practices – Our Global Downstream and Upstream organizations developed standardized processes to address training, high-risk work and lessons learned from major incidents.
- Fitness for Duty – Chevron established a standardized process to determine whether employees are safely able to perform the requirements of their job.
- Occupational Hygiene – A corporate Occupational Hygiene process to further enable us to protect workers' health by identifying, quantifying and controlling occupational exposures to environmental agents that may affect the health of the workforce. We also established a corporate exposure standard for hydrogen sulfide in the workplace.
- Reliability – Chevron offered 24 courses and held more than 225 classes through our Reliability University, training more than 3,000 individuals in the behaviors and tools needed to improve the reliability of our operations and capital projects.
Employee's Cardiovascular Health
Helping employees improve their health is another way in which Chevron strives for a safe, productive work environment. We have developed a program to address major risk factors for cardiovascular disease among our employees. Designed with the assistance of public health experts, the program provides cardiovascular risk assessment tools that employees can use voluntarily and confidentially. For individuals at medium or high risk, a health mentor is available to support behavioral changes associated with better health. We are translating the assessment and educational tools into multiple languages. In 2007, we made these tools available to pilot sites in Nigeria, the Philippines and parts of the United States.
Facing the Challenges of HIV/AIDS
Chevron in 2007 became the first Corporate Champion of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. Over the next three years, we will contribute $30 million to support the Global Fund's work to combat these diseases around the world. Leveraging our experience working with local communities, we will focus our approach on collaboration and partnership, a model shared by the Global Fund.
Chevron is in its third year of implementing a global policy to help fight the spread of HIV/AIDS and to address its effects among our workforce and communities where we operate. The policy focuses on delivering customized education, awareness building, prevention and treatment programs across the organization and on reducing the stigma associated with HIV/AIDS. Forty HIV/AIDS policy coordinators drive implementation globally. Our goal is to have all Chevron employees understand how to prevent HIV/AIDS and, wherever possible, to provide access to voluntary testing and treatment resources.
During 2007, we continued to provide training on HIV/AIDS prevention, testing, management and treatment. Since the introduction of our HIV/AIDS program, approximately 6,370 managers and supervisors and 11,200 employees have received training customized for their particular geographic area.
Combating Malaria in African Communities
Chevron's anti-malaria efforts are focused primarily in Angola and Nigeria, countries where we operate and where the mosquito-borne infection is prevalent. In Angola, we promote awareness of how malaria is transmitted, assist with training community-based health workers and provide clinical supplies. Chevron also provides insecticide-treated mosquito nets to employees and their families. In 2007, we expanded this effort by distributing 14,000 nets to communities near our Angola operations. These combined efforts have contributed to a 40 percent decrease in annual malaria cases among our employees and their families. In Nigeria, the River Boat Clinic, launched in 2000, delivers prevention, diagnostic and treatment supplies directly to remote communities in the Niger Delta.
Arrive Alive
Chevron established the Arrive Alive program to help eliminate traffic-related fatalities and injuries in the communities where we operate. Working with government agencies, nongovernmental organizations, trade associations and other private-sector companies, Chevron has formed or joined collaborative nonprofit entities in Guatemala, Nigeria, South Africa and Uganda to help develop and implement road safety action plans. In 2007, a program was established in El Salvador. These efforts seek to create solutions through advocacy, enforcement, education and communication, addressing the root causes of road traffic incidents in several communities that host our operations.
Our longest-running Arrive Alive partnership is in Guatemala. In the first full year of implementation, the number of traffic accidents at nine "hot spots" declined from an average of more than 40 per month to one or two per month after corrective measures were instituted, a 95 percent reduction. At one hot spot near a school, the accident rate fell to zero after local officials installed new road signs, stepped up traffic enforcement efforts and trained school students on safe road-crossing practices.
Updated: May 2008