United Arab Emirates, 29 May 2023: Emirates Global Aluminium, the largest industrial company in the United Arab Emirates outside oil and gas, today announced it is bringing the innovative behavioural safety programme SafeStart to the region as part of the company’s journey to zero harm.

EGA’s safety performance is already significantly better than global industry benchmarks. EGA is now aiming to eliminate the risk of serious harm in its operation this decade, a bold goal that has never been achieved by any industrial company.

EGA is focused on continuously improving all four factors of safety – technical solutions including inherently safe equipment, organisational safety management systems, authentic safety leadership, and human behaviour.

SafeStart addresses the human factor of safety, with the insight that rushing, frustration, fatigue or complacency contribute to almost all accidents both at work and outside. These states-of-mind lead to four critical errors – eyes not on task, mind not on task, moving into or being in the line of fire, and problems with balance, traction or grip.

As the vast majority of accidents worldwide leading to injury happen outside workplaces, the programme aims to enable EGA’s people to recognise these states-of mind and errors in themselves throughout their lives.

Abdulnasser Bin Kalban, Chief Executive Officer of Emirates Global Aluminium, said: “Our goal of eliminating the risk of harm is essential and very ambitious for any industrial company. To achieve it, we must focus on further improving all aspects of safety. Each of us at EGA is responsible for our own safety and the safety of everyone around us. This programme will enable us to recognise sates-of-mind which all human beings are prone to which can lead to someone getting hurt.”

Larry Wilson, Founder of SafeStart, is visiting EGA in Dubai to launch the programme and said: “EGA is a safety leader in the global aluminium industry, and I am pleased to bring SafeStart to the Middle East to support their goal to improve safety even further. In our lives, most of us have experienced accidents and all of us have had many near misses. Recognising our own states-of-mind that contribute to these unfortunate events is one key to preventing them, including at work.”

SafeStart has been deployed by more than 3,500 companies in over 60 countries.

EGA has a track record of innovative behavioural safety programmes that improve safety performance. EGA’s Beat the Heat programme, which enables employees to recognise the early signs of heat-related illness, has run for a decade and contributed to the company achieving zero heat-related illnesses amongst its workforce last summer.