Safety, Health & Wellness - Hormel Foods Corporate Responsibility Report

Our constant focus on the safety, health and wellness of our team members is a top priority for the company.

15K

Team Members

received monthly safety training

Safety Award

Robust Safety Program

Corporate Citizen

State-Of-The-Art Health Center

located in Austin, Minn.

COVID-19 Safety Efforts

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the company led with its Cultural Belief of Safety First as we continued to take heightened precautions to keep our team members safe in 2021. These included but were not limited to:

Most office team members worked remotely until June 2021, when we began a phased approach of returning to work in our offices.
We provided constant transparent and timely communication at all times during the pandemic, resulting in team members citing the company’s COVID-19 information as the most reliable source throughout the pandemic, based on company survey data. Communications were translated into more than a dozen languages.
We continued to provide access to masks and personal protective face coverings for our plant professional team members.
In addition to our high level of cleaning and sanitizing as part of our routine operations, we continued our enhanced sanitation procedures in all high-traffic and high-touch areas. Under the guidance of health care professionals, we continued to take our team members’ temperatures and conducted wellness screenings prior to entering our facilities. We also provided on-site testing for team members.
We continued social distancing in our production facilities by having staggered start times and staggered break times, and spreading out team members during breaks by using areas outside of the normal cafeteria spaces.
Our company’s Event Evaluation Committee, consisting of senior leaders, along with our risk management, operations and human resources teams, continued to work collaboratively to identify and mitigate risks, and develop processes to continue to provide a safe, secure working environment.
We led the industry with educational and informational materials through our KEEP COVID OUT! campaign, cited as a blue-ribbon effort by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
We continued to provide our pay protection program to provide paid leave and benefits to any team members who were feeling unwell, quarantined due to close contact or who tested positive for COVID-19.
We partnered with leading physicians and other health care experts from Mayo Clinic to host several town halls with our CEO to inform and educate our global workforce about COVID-19.
We created a vaccine awareness campaign called Count Me In! and provided information to help our team members get vaccinations. We also held vaccination clinics at some of our locations.
We provided mental health resources to our team members throughout the pandemic, including free virtual resources.

Additional information about our leading efforts to keep our team members safe throughout the pandemic can be found on our corporate website.

Injury/Illness Rates

Our dedicated corporate safety department develops and administers companywide policies to ensure the safety of our team members and compliance with Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) standards. These policies also apply to our suppliers, contractors and visitors while they are visiting our facilities. The corporate safety department also conducts regular audits of our production facilities to ensure compliance with company safety policies.

One example of how Hormel Foods instills the principles of safety into everyday operations is through our Safety Awareness Mascot (SAM), who is featured in safety communications. The Hormel Foods safety department introduced SAM to brand the safety process and increase understanding of the company’s safety principles. Hormel Foods also provides safety training and has a Safety Excellence recognition program that honors locations that have achieved superior results.

One of our 20 By 30 Challenge goals is to provide a safe workplace for all team members and reduce our injury rates each year. We consistently perform better than the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) industry average for North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) 3116 Animal Slaughtering and Processing for our injury/illness incident rates. We are pleased that we reduced our Total Case Incident Rate and Days Away, Restricted or Transfer rate in 2021. In addition, we did not have any workplace fatalities.

Total Case Incident Rate – OSHA calculates the Total Case Incident Rate (TCIR) as the number of OSHA recordable incidents multiplied by 200,000 hours and divided by the total hours worked that year. In 2021, the TCIR at Hormel Foods was 2.3, which is better than the BLS industry average of 6.7.

Days Away From Work Injury and Illness – Days Away from Work Injury and Illness (DAFWII) measures an injury or illness that involves one or more days away from work. In 2021, the DAFWII rate at Hormel Foods was 0.6, which is better than the BLS industry average of 3.9.

Days Away, Restricted or Transfer – Days Away, Restricted or Transfer (DART) measures the days a team member has restricted work activity or job transfer, or both. In 2021, our DART rate was 1.4, which is better than the BLS industry average of 5.7.

Description	2020	2021
TCIR	2.6	2.3
DAFWII	0.6	0.6
DART	1.7	1.4

Safety Training

Hormel Foods conducts safety training for an average of over 15,000 team members in our locations every month and completes approximately 1,000 safety assessments each month companywide. In 2021, Hormel Foods conducted an average of over 7,800 lockout-tagout (LOTO) inspections per quarter and held semimonthly companywide safety conference calls with plant safety personnel.

Health and Wellness

We recognize our team members perform best when they are healthy, and that optimal performance is necessary for us to achieve our Key Results. In addition to our health care benefits package, our Inspired Health program aims to cultivate and maintain a culture of health and wellness that is focused on encouraging and empowering team members to make healthy lifestyle choices through awareness, prevention and positive health behavior changes. This program includes biometric screenings, on-site fitness centers and fitness center discounts, an online health university with robust information and resources, a tobacco cessation program, wellness challenges, confidential health and wellness support 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and more. Due to COVID-19, we were unable to provide biometric screenings in 2021; however, we offered an alternative to our team members to continue to promote health and wellness.

In addition, in 2020 we opened a state-of-the-art health center for our team members, close to our global headquarters and flagship production facility in Austin, Minn. In partnership with Premise Health, which operates the facility, the clinic improves access to high-quality, affordable health care for our team members and their dependent family members. The health center builds on the existing relationship between Hormel Foods and the renowned Mayo Clinic. With the dedicated health center and additional resources provided by Mayo Clinic, such as radiology and specialty service referrals for areas such as cardiology, orthopedics, dermatology and behavioral health, team members and their dependents have full access to care when they need it. In total, this health center serves several thousand eligible individuals on the company’s health plans, including team members, their dependents ages 2 and older, and retirees under the age of 65. Additional information about our new health center can be found here.