Living Our Principles: People
To keep injuries to a minimum in our Chinese joint ventures, Shanghai Hormel Foods Co., Ltd., and Beijing Hormel Foods Co., Ltd., offer safety incentive programs that include safety committees and monthly employee training programs. Both plants have functional monitoring systems for “Injury Free Work Days.” Also, these plants go beyond government regulations by requiring employees to use provided personal protective equipment when necessary. This equipment includes cut-resistant hand wear, forearm guards, belly guards, helmets, boots and suitable clothing for the environment.
Hormel Foods understands ergonomics affects production, yields, quality, efficiencies and the overall effectiveness of all workers, so we implemented an ergonomic program in the late 1980s—years before it was required by law.
Each location has a Safety and Ergonomics team composed of people from throughout the facilities who work to reduce the stress and strain employees can experience while on the job. The corporate office and each of our facilities have access to these teams, which include employees from many departments, including engineering, safety, operations, production and health care. They perform Ergonomic Job Analysis (EJA) and survey employees to improve workstation and method design for all jobs and tasks.
Hormel Foods’ industrial engineers implemented the use of personal digital assistants (PDAs) into their many work measurement processes, including EJAs within plant environments. An ergonomic assessment tool has been added to the PDAs, which provides an ergonomic checklist to help assess initial ergonomic risk for each job in the plant. The key ergonomic risk factors are repetition, force, environment and posture, and detailed assessments are performed to help guide and substantiate corrective action toward ergonomic improvement.
View our 2009 Hormel Foods Corporate Responsibility Report for additional stories about how we are living our principles.