Polyus Verninskoye took part in the Baikal International Forum of Partners in Irkutsk, presenting best practice in employee occupational health and safety. During the forum, Polyus made some suggestions for potential improvements to the obligatory insurance system in Russia.
Members of the Polyus management team spoke on a panel about workplace health and safety put on by the Chamber of Industry and Commerce of Eastern Siberia, along with the Branch of the Social Security Fund for the Irkutsk Region.
Igor Tsukurov, Managing Director of Polyus Verninskoye, addressed the forum participants:“At Polyus, we have always been continually improving our occupational safety. This has gained special momentum since 2015, when we introduced our corporate Safety culture project. Within the first two years of the project, we managed to train more than 1000 employees. At the same time, we introduced new safety guidelines, a Behavioral safety audit, Risk assessment and management, Incident root cause analysis and Contractor management. As a result of the project, employee understanding of safety has changed dramatically.
There have been no incidents at Polyus Verninskoye for over two years. Health and safety is our absolute priority. As a leading Russian company in health and safety, we are keen to share our best practice with the participants of the Baikal International Forum.”
Over the course of the forum, Polyus proposed a number of initiatives for improving the mandatory insurance system in Russia. The Company proposed organising training in managing the electronic document flow related to the return of Social Insurance funds, and advocated paying employee sick leave to shift employees from the first day of sickness through funds from the Social Insurance Fund.