Safety & Health

Workplace Safety Record for 2020

At The Coca‑Cola Company, our long-term success depends on working to ensure the safety of our workers, visitors to our operations, and the public.

We believe that a safe and healthy workplace is a fundamental right of every person and also a business imperative. Our Workplace Rights Policy requires that we take responsibility for maintaining a productive workplace in every part of our Company by doing what we can to minimize the risk of accidents, injury and exposure to health hazards for all of our associates and contractors. In addition, we’re working with our bottling partners to help ensure health and safety risks are minimized for their employees and contract workers.

Coca‑Cola Operating Requirements

The Coca‑Cola Operating Requirements (KORE) define the policies, standards and requirements for managing safety, the environment and quality throughout our operations. In addition to requiring compliance with applicable legal requirements, KORE also requires that our manufacturing and distribution facilities implement BS OHSAS 18001 and ISO 45001 (internationally recognized frameworks of occupational health and safety management systems and requirements to improve employee safety, reduce workplace risks and create better, safer working conditions, all over the world).

To guide us in working to achieve a safe work environment for our associates, KORE defines a rigorous set of operational controls to manage known risks. The controls generally align with top global requirements and consensus standards.

As a result of 2015 efforts to continue implementing and improving governance systems, all audits were moved to unannounced. Moving forward, unannounced audits have become routine with few exceptions (for example, where local support may be required to facilitate entry into the Country). Additionally, all Safety and Environment audits previously performed by external auditors, were internalized.

Safety Training

Occupational Safety and Health is also a key theme of our engagement with our supply chain and focuses on Enabling Services/Building Capabilities, Technical Governance, and Policy. Our supply chain governance audits cover 22 Coca‑Cola Company safe and healthy workplace conditions and behavior facets, and we have substantially engaged in training and capability building across our supply chain. We provide substantial safety training to our associates using the training requirements defined in KORE as a global baseline, as well as applicable legal requirements. Training covers new-hire induction and periodic refresher training for all associates and other workers conducting work on our behalf.

The Quality, Safety & Environment (QSE) capability team has implemented programs designed to improve operational performance, such as The QSE Professional Excellence Program is an intensive training and development program focused on field development; and QSE College provides online quality, safety and environmental training for business units of the Company as well as bottling partners globally.

Improving Route-to-Market Safety

Operating safely remains a top priority for the Coca‑Cola system. A prominent component of our safety program is improving route-to-market safety. Route-to-market, or RTM, is defined as the movement of products and people between our bottling plants and our customers. RTM is characterized by a complex chain of events that varies greatly throughout the world and often involves third-party partners. Because everything from cars and trucks to canoes and motorcycles is used to distribute our products, solutions must be developed and implemented at a local level.

RTM encompasses the downstream storage and distribution of our product, as well as any movement of employees along public roadways. Proactive safety processes that emphasize situational awareness and attention to detail are critical. Bottling partners continue to place great importance on the route risk assessments and comprehensive defensive driver training. This ensures our drivers are aware of the identifiable risks they may encounter and understand how to avoid collisions or incidents.

The Coca‑Cola Company and our bottling partners also continue to engage in community outreach. The Company is an active Board Member of the Network of Employers for Traffic Safety (NETS), a conglomerate of organizations that have similar fleet operations where we learn best practices and benchmark to effect change in global markets to improve infrastructure or operational behaviors. This work ultimately impacts the safety of our employees as well as road safety in the communities we operate in.