our culture of safety
Hecla’s greatest resource is its people; their health and safety is our top priority. Without our dedicated and talented workforce, we would not be as successful as we are today. Management is responsible for ensuring a safe workplace by minimizing hazards and providing training and safe equipment. Each property has its own challenges and methods, but all have the same goal: to send employees and contractors home to their families safe and sound – every day.
a path to success
Hecla consistently looks for ways to improve health and safety in the workplace, and tracks a variety of safety performance indicators: injuries, near misses, and equipment damage. Each year, our goal is to reduce safety incidents and improve upon the previous year’s performance. In addition, we use reportable and non-reportable health and safety data to identify trends at each operation.
In 2010, Lucky Friday successfully implemented safety initiatives which include near-miss incident reporting and best practices assessment at crew meetings. As a result, the incident rate decreased from 8.3 for the first six months of 2010 to 3.0 for the last six months. Lucky Friday will continue with these initiatives.
The choice for all employees is clear: when a conflict arises between production and safety, safety should always come first.
Our top priority remains protecting our workforce and mitigating risks. Hecla’s Lucky Friday operation, until the recent fatality in April 2011, had achieved 25 years or 8.5 million man-hours without a fatality. Hecla is committed to the continuous improvement of our health and safety practices.
