On June 7, HHI‘s 45,000 employees achieved 15 million accident-free working hours from April 20 to June 6 2010.

Considering the vast number of employees and the level of difficulty of the work, this record has not been easy to achieve.

In celebration of this achievement for the first time in HHI’s history, HHI gave 48,000 stuffed rice cake packs to its employees. Since an accident-free working environment is not possible through only top-down policies such as company safety rules and facility renovations, HHI has promoted grassroots safety campaigns by encouraging employees to show initiative in establishing a safety culture.

The safety culture programs include Safety Communication Day when safety staff highlight weekly safety improvements and Safety Dialogue. In the Safety Dialogue, employees share potential safety accident causes. There is also the Safety UCC Contest where employees can share self-made safety related video clips with their colleagues.

Thanks to these efforts, HHI’s safety record significantly improved from 1.11% of accident rates in 2006, to 0.94 in 2007, 0.53% in 2008 and 0.42% in 2009. According to Ministry of Labor statistics, Korea’s average accident rate is 0.7% and 1.41% in the shipbuilding industry.

Mr. Park Joong-soon, executive vice president, said that this remarkable safety achievement of 15 million accident-free working hours was possible based on the shared awareness of safety importance among employees.