EU commissioner social affairs Marianne Thysssen awarded Toyota Material Handling Europe a “commendation” for its approach to managing employees’ health over their entire career span. “Healthy Workplaces for All Ages” is the fourth EU-OSHA campaign the company has been actively promoting both within its own organisation of 10,000 employees, as well as to its extensive European network of customers and suppliers.
Since Toyota Material Handling Europe employs over 4,500 service technicians, they represent over 50% of the company’s workforce. In addition to this, 15% of the total workforce is over 50 years old. While straining movements can be eliminated throughout the factory and premises, having mobile technicians working at customer sites in uncomfortable positions can easily lead to overstrain.
In order to prevent these types of injuries, Toyota Material Handling in Spain developed a physiotherapy programme for all their technicians, which was also implemented by other Toyota Material Handling entities and shares with EU-OSHA campaign partners through EU-OSHA’s Good Practice Benchmarking events.
“Creating healthy workplaces is not only the right thing to do in line with our Toyota Values, it is also a rational decision that results in better business outcomes: lower costs, better quality and higher customer satisfaction, as supported by the achievements by our colleagues in Spain,” explains Tom Schalenbourg, Director Sustainable Development at Toyota Material Handling Europe.
Jordi Martinez, Risk Prevention Advisor and Safety Committee Member at Toyota Material Handling España is pleased with the end result: “On top of increasing employee well-being, the plan also proved to be financially beneficial. Overall, the absenteeism costs avoided equal four times the money invested in 337 sessions. In turn, insurance premiums were also reduced significantly. We are re-investing all these savings in health and safety measures for employees in Spain to create a virtuous cycle, which is very helpful to keep all our colleagues engaged in improving health and safety.”
(Photo from left to right: Stephen Bevan, Chair of the Jury; Christa Sedlatschek, Director of EU-OSHA; Merce Santacreu, HR Director Toyota Material Handling España, Jordi Martinez, Risk Prevention Advisor and Safety Committee Member Toyota Material Handling España, Tom Schalenbourg, Director Sustainable Development Toyota Material Handling Europe; EU Commissioner Marianne Thyssen)
