Showcasing its ongoing commitment to safety, which runs like a ‘golden thread’ throughout the company, Dekra Industrial SA announced the achievement of its 8th annual NOSCAR safety award – the highest safety honour which can be bestowed on a business by the National Occupational Safety Association (NOSA).
Ingrained safety culture
As part of its global parent company, Dekra Industrial in South Africa has played a major role in the fields of NDT (non-destructive testing) and inspection locally – across a wide range of industry sectors – for many years. The company’s Health, Safety and Environment (HSE) manager, Carina Kleinhans, explains: “This award highlights our ingrained ethos of ‘living the safety culture’ across our company and country, and around the clock. The recent NOSA ranking furthermore reflects our highest ever score of 97,48% – compared to our original 2013 score of 92,28%.”
Kleinhans adds that Dekra Industrial is a company that is committed to safety from the management level through to each team member, throughout its nationwide branches. “Every Dekra Industrial employee and contractor is encouraged to keep identifying areas for improvement, and risk mitigation and management, within the workplace. You could say that every branch and department is interlinked by our safety mindset, while our management team members operate a true open-door policy to hear and attend to any areas of concern.”
On top of safety requirements
Categories that are audited annually by NOSA include: leadership and worker participation; planning, support and operational; performance evaluation; improvement; safety; health; environmental; risk management; systems; compliance, and effectiveness.
“In addition,” clarifies Kleinhans, “legislative requirements can change from time to time, and we are also required to remain abreast of this. A good example is how 2020 brought in new additional reporting factors relating to Covid-19. Dekra Industrial complied with all new requirements, while not only maintaining but in fact improving, our NOSA ranking with an even higher score.”
Dekra Industrial managing director, Johan Gerber, adds: “These audited NOSA results are very pleasing, and we are extremely proud to have improved upon our results – from an already high benchmark – in line with our desire to be true ‘heroes of safety’. I congratulate Carina and the entire HSE team, as well as each and every individual employee throughout the company.”
“In addition to improving our NOSA score on an annual basis, it is also extremely heartwarming to note that, whenever we leave a site, we are always able to say with pride that we worked there safely. In doing so, we are really living our culture of being ‘on the safe side’ and going the extra safety mile,” concludes Kleinhans.
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