Employee Health, Safety and Wellness

Investing in Our Workforce

Our people are our most important asset. The work they do every day allows us to deliver best-in-class innovation, service and support to our customers and enhance the efficiencies of our operations while also serving as an example of corporate citizenship in our communities. In all our endeavors, we are committed to providing a safe and healthy working environment for our employees and creating ample career development opportunities so they can realize their full potential.

It Starts With Safety

Workplace health and safety are important Crown values. They are requirements that get built into every process, procedure and system of the Company as well as the attitudes and values of every employee – from top management down. We believe that a safe and healthy workplace is a fundamental right of every person and a business imperative.

We have built a Total Safety Culture by supporting each employee and exceeding basic requirements to achieve safety excellence. Our focus includes helping employees develop a keen sense of responsibility for observation, behavior and attitude, identifying ways of instilling safer work practices and fostering communication so they feel encouraged to discuss safety issues with their peers. The end result is safer decision-making, correction of unsafe behaviors and reduction of incidents, injuries and near-misses.

Total Safety Culture Principles

  • Every Crown employee understands that he or she is responsible for safety.
  • Safe work practices and procedures are supported by positive feedback from peers and all levels of management.
  • Our focus is on behaviors and attitudes and achieving success in incident, injury and near-miss reduction.
  • Employees at all levels consistently identify unsafe behaviors and conditions that are present and intervene to correct deficiencies.
  • The importance of a safe workplace is not just a priority, but a value linked to every employee in the organization. That is because while priorities can change over time, values remain core to what we do.

Our approach to workplace health and safety includes multiple programs and procedures:

  • Our Environment, Health and Safety (EHS) organizations support every Crown location – including corporate offices, research and development facilities, Centers of Excellence and plants – in meeting or exceeding regulatory requirements and Company standards. Crown’s health and safety team members focus on safety training, increasing safety awareness, safety audits, healthcare and more.
  • Our SAFE (Safety Awareness For Employees) behavioral observation program has resulted in thousands of peer-to-peer safety observations every day.
  • Auditing each Crown site to identify and correct potential hazards and liabilities, helping ensure continuous improvement.
  • Holding safety workshops for salaried and hourly employees at every Crown location.
  • Recognizing achievements in safety excellence through our World-Class Performance program.
  • Mandating a job hazard analysis at each site for every significant task, developing safe job procedures and reviewing every new process and purchase against a safety checklist.
  • Setting strict safety requirements for contractors and third-party vendors who work with Crown.
  • Implementing a program to monitor contractor safety.
  • Providing ergonomic training to reduce and eliminate musculoskeletal disorders.
  • Implementing a system for injury and accident investigations, including near-misses, that examines root causes and assigns short- and long-term corrective actions.

Our Journey Toward Improved Outcomes

We aspire to zero work-related injuries. To help us achieve that goal, we constantly review, evaluate and invest in improving our processes, procedures, technology and training programs.

To help make our approach to safety metrics more proactive, we are moving away from reliance on lagging indicators, such as Recordable Case Rates, to leading indicators such as employee engagement in safety, near-miss investigations and hazard recognition.

Safety Performance 1 2

Days Away Case Rate 3

DIVISION 2015 2016 2017 2018
Worldwide 1.0 0.9 1.0 1.0
Crown Americas 0.8 0.9 1.0 1.1
Crown Europe 4 1.4 1.0 1.2 1.1
Crown Asia Pacific 0.2 0.5 0.5 0.5
  1. Safety performance data does not include plants from our Transit Packaging Division. These plants were not operated by Crown during the entire reporting period and it was not possible to segment this information. This data will be included in future reports.
  2. Crown does not track data for Days Away Case Rate, Recordable Case Rate or Work-Related Fatalities by gender.
  3. Days Away Case Rate = ( (Number of Lost Time Cases) x (200,000) ) / (Number of Employee Labor Hours Worked)
  4. Increases in the Days Away Case Rate figure for Crown Europe in 2015 can be attributed to the inclusion of data from the newly acquired Mivisa food can manufacturing facilities into the calculation.

The Days Away Case Rate considers only injuries and illnesses in which an employee was unable to work. The rate is calculated by multiplying the number of days away cases by 200,000 and dividing the result by the total number of hours worked.

Recordable Case Rate

DIVISION 2015 2016 2017 2018
Worldwide 2.7 2.5 2.4 2.1
Crown Americas 2.0 1.9 2.3 2.1
Crown Europe 5 6 3.6 3.4 3.2 2.4
Crown Asia Pacific 7 0.2 0.6 0.6 0.7
  1. Crown does not have data measuring the Recordable Case Rate for this region in 2007 and 2008.
  2. Increases in the Recordable Case Rate figure for Crown Europe in 2015 can be attributed to the inclusion of data from the newly acquired Mivisa food can manufacturing facilities into the calculation.
  3. Crown did not collect Recordable Case Rate data in its Asia Pacific Division until 2015.

Regional differences in regulatory standards and definitions of Recordable Case Rates may make Divisional comparisons misleading. In contrast, trend data within the Divisions over time offers an accurate view of progress as the country-to-country profile has not significantly changed during the reporting period.

Work-Related Fatalities

DIVISION 2015 2016 2017 2018
Worldwide 0 0 0 1
Crown Americas 0 0 0 0
Crown Europe 0 0 0 0
Crown Asia Pacific 0 0 0 1

Unfortunately, even with a comprehensive health and safety program in place, Crown sustained a fatality in one of our Asia Pacific facilities in 2018. After a thorough investigation and analysis of the incident, corrective actions were implemented throughout our operations. In addition, we used this tragic event as an opportunity to increase safety awareness in all our facilities. The reinvigoration of our behavior-based employee safety program has led to increased conversations with employees about safe and unsafe behaviors – at home as well as at work. The idea that employees bear responsibility for their own safe behavior has helped reduce incidents and injuries by decreasing at-risk actions and increasing safe behaviors. Through this process, employees have also become more aware of the actions of others, making safety a community effort as well as a personal one.

Developing Talent

Crown places a high value on skills management and lifelong learning opportunities that benefit both the individual employee and the Company. One hundred percent of salaried employees receive annual reviews, and we provide a variety of educational opportunities, including a mix of mandatory and voluntary training programs that occur in classrooms, online, on the job or in partnership with academic institutions.

We also recognize that some of the best learning experiences come from challenging job tasks and through participation in multifunctional teams. That is why, for example, our management training involves a variety of assignments including customized functional training, international exposure and core Division-wide activity to develop common approaches and values.

In many of the countries where we operate, there are strict legal obligations related to the amount of training that companies must provide for employees. To help retain a high level of talent at Crown and ensure that each employee has ample opportunities to grow and prosper, we often go above and beyond these requirements. We can report that over 55% of our global employees received some level of company-sponsored training in 2018.

Talent Development Programs (programs vary by region)

Here are just a few of the ways we help our employees advance their skills:

  • Elements of Engagement Leadership Program
  • Engage for Excellence program to support employee performance management
  • Operations Leadership Development Program
  • Lean Manufacturing trainings and Six Sigma certification (Green or Black Belt)
  • Crown Leading Edge (CLE) program to develop future leaders
  • Early career development programs, including FORWARD and SEED
  • Higher education sponsorship for senior managers
  • Language courses for non-native speakers

Staying Healthy

Our commitment to the health and wellness of our employees extends beyond the time they spend inside our facilities. That is why we offer a range of physical, mental and social wellness programs to our global team and their families. We administer health and wellness programs differently from country to country based on local needs, but many of our employees have access to:

  • Pre-employment medical checkups
  • Company- or government-sponsored medical insurance or subsidized medical insurance over and above governmental provisions
  • Annual medical and audiometry screenings
  • Reimbursement for outpatient medical expenses and yearly screenings
  • Employee Assistance Programs to help improve health and wellness
  • Voluntary health fairs at all sites in the U.S. The fairs are open to hourly and salaried employees and their spouses. Free blood work and medical screenings are provided, along with follow-up and physician referrals upon request.
Fox Chase Cancer Center truck

Beating Breast Cancer at Crown HQ

About one in eight U.S. women will develop invasive breast cancer in her lifetime. For the women affected and their loved ones, early detection is key.

Each year around National Women’s Health Week, we encourage our employees to get tested by providing on-site mammograms at our corporate headquarters in Yardley, PA (U.S.). Provided in partnership with the Fox Chase Cancer Center of Philadelphia, the mobile Mammography Screening Unit visits Crown and opens its doors to help women detect masses, malformations and other warning signs of disease that, if caught at the right time, can make a life-changing difference.

Our goal is to make preventative care more accessible for our employees who may not live close to screening centers or haven’t had the chance to get tested on their own.

To date, the unit has conducted more than 800 mammography screenings. It will continue to return each May, with the hopes of growing that number and encouraging our employees to take proactive steps toward wellness.