Safety for our employees

Safety management system

KONE Way for Safety, our safety management system, guides us in continuously improving safety in all KONE workplaces and tasks. It is applicable to the management of KONE employees, subcontractors, partner safety as well and promoting equipment user safety. KONE Way for Safety is based on the ISO 45001 Occupational health and safety management systems standard.

Health and safety policy

Our mission, safety objectives, and commitment are addressed in KONE Health and safety policy. Read KONE's health and safety policy statement.

Safety in mind in all tasks

In order to manage the main risks in our workplaces and to keep our people safe, we have defined nine expected safety behaviors. We call them core safety principles. These behaviors are applicable to all employees, subcontractors, and partners. By acting according to these principles, we aim to prevent serious incidents from happening.

IIFR as a safety performance indicator

We are determined to continuously improve our health and safety performance. One of the key performance indicators to measure our health and safety performance is Industrial Injury Frequency Rate (IIFR). IIFR is the number of lost time injuries of one day or more per million hours worked.

Safety is in our culture

Safety, quality, and sustainability are our core principles – areas we never compromise. Together with our company values: care, customer, collaboration, and courage, they form a strong foundation for our company culture. Read more about our culture here.

Safety training program

A competent and qualified workforce is a critical factor for safety. All employees and subcontractors receive health and safety training relevant to one’s work enabling it to be performed in a professional and safe manner. Training consists of general training applicable for all and the additional role and task-specific training. By the end of 2020, 56,000 employees, as well as many of our subcontractors, completed our updated general safety training launched in 2019.

Safety week

To increase awareness and further strengthen the safety culture, KONE has organized a global safety week every year, since 2012. During our safety week, we organize special events, training, and activities for employees and partners and end-users, to promote the safe use of elevators, escalators, and automatic doors. Our beloved KONE safety mascots, Bob and Max, have visited many shopping centers, kindergartens, and customer premises around the world to promote safety in a fun and engaging way.

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, our top priority has been to ensure the health and safety of our people in the field, factories, and offices and to help minimize the impact on customers and the users of our equipment. We have been and are taking strong actions to manage the situation in all functions and markets, following the instructions, for example, from the World Health Organization and the local governments and health authorities.

As many of our employees have worked from home and our field employees have faced changed circumstances, we have been focusing particularly on taking care of the mental well-being of our workforce. More information can be found in our Sustainability Report 2020.