Occupational health and safety (OHS)

Lindt & Sprüngli’s Health and Safety Policy outlines our commitment to complying with applicable laws, regulations, and industry standards, along with our commitment to providing employee training on health and safety matters. The Policy and the Lindt Performance Way (LPW) efficiency framework help us to improve our local OHS systems in order to identify, assess, analyze, and minimize health and safety risks in the workplace.

Safety culture

Our Group Operations team is responsible for Lindt & Sprüngli’s general approach to safety. This is implemented by our production facilities, and overseen by Group Management, which receives annual updates. The management teams of local Lindt & Sprüngli production subsidiaries and facilities are responsible for tracking performance on a monthly basis, and for developing relevant and specific working procedures and practices to meet local regulatory and Group requirements. These requirements mainly focus on activity-based risk assessments and behavioral safety.

Designated health and safety employees at our production sites work to improve the processes and procedures necessary for a safe working environment. They conduct OHS self-assessments, identify hazards and risks, and investigate incidents. Each production facility has a system in place for employees to report accidents, unsafe conditions, and near-miss incidents. Employees are encouraged to identify and report workplace hazards and risks so that we may better understand the root cause of incidents and take preventive action. Each site is responsible for training its employees on OHS topics to support their site-specific needs. Through our Supplier Code of Conduct, we also expect our suppliers to provide their own employees with a safe and healthy workplace.

Addressing our safety risks

We aim to cease or modify activities that pose the highest risks. Activity-based risk assessments serve as the foundation of this work. In 2023, we completed an in-depth health and safety assessment program with a third party across our entire Group. The goal of these assessments was threefold: 1. Understand compliance against local regulatory requirements; 2. Understand compliance against internal standards and procedures; 3. Assess the maturity level of the local safety culture. The assessment looked at organizational, operational, and leadership elements. We will use the audit data to supplement internal analysis and establish a new strategy and approach to health and safety management and practice globally from 2024.

Our performance

In 2023, we began improving our injury and illness data reporting processes. We implemented a new reporting system and launched a uniform set of definitions, which all Lindt & Sprüngli companies (production companies and distribution companies) and departments will be required to use from 1 January 2024 onwards. Training was also provided on the new system and definitions. Due to our focus on implementing a new methodology and definitions across subsidiaries, we are not externally reporting global health and safety figures for 2023 or prior years. We will report these figures again as of the 2024 reporting year.