To create a positive work environment, we strive to provide opportunities for everyone to succeed. To engage all members of the ICL family, we make sure to implement meaningful work and cultivate positive company culture. Driven by our vision to create an impact for a sustainable future, we continue on our mission of valuing innovation and quality alongside safety and sustainability. To ensure the health and safety of employees and dependents across all ICL sites and facilities, we have created OEMS – Operational Excellence Management System – with a particular focus on compliance with the Environment, Health, Safety/Sustainability, and Risk Management (EHS).
We hold an annual Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) week for all our employees worldwide as part of this effort.
To set the mood, we would like to share the success story of Brooke Schweda, an employee at ICL who started as a hexameta operator and is currently a Furnace operator overseeing utilities and production of phosphoric acid. She was first introduced to one of the pillars of OEMS, the Human and Organizational Performance (HOP) methodology, in a learning group while working in hexameta. “I really enjoyed how the group worked together to make the process better,” she says. Brooke has since become an enthusiastic exponent of the HOP principles among the employees in her plant. “Being proactive and putting safety first actually rubs off on others,” she explains. As a result, she enjoys making the plant a better, safer place where employees are mutually responsible and responsive. Brooke believes that the HOP principles help guide this process of self-improvement.
One recent example demonstrating how the HOP promoted such a process occurred when Brooke realized that the plant would soon lose over 80 years of experience once a group of employees reached retirement age. “The furnace LOTOTO (disabling machines and equipment – locking and tagging; Lock-Out, Tag-out, and Try-Out) is an area that we need to infuse with some of the knowledge,” she says. So Brooke has reached out to the area engineer to start the process before employees retire and their knowledge is lost, avoiding any potential for complications.
Learning groups are only one aspect of HOP, and HOP is only one of the four pillars of the management system and overall safety program, OEMS. The overall safety program also includes Process Safety Management (PSM), emergency pre-planning, and Industry 4.0 – referring to the 4th industrial revolution and the use of cutting-edge technology like intelligent cameras and remote-control devices to enhance safety. Brooke has also contributed to this program by activities performed on GOARC, a real-time safety intelligence platform that helps with prevention and risk reduction.
“I share my experience and volunteer to be part of the solution any way I can,” says Brooke. Her commitment to quality with an emphasis on safety raises ICL’s professional standards to new heights and is what makes the company a leading employer of choice across the globe.
