Tata Steel’s two innovative initiatives during the Covid pandemic have earned recognition from World Steel Association under the category ‘occupational health management’.
The recognition has been given for the two technology-driven safety and health initiatives — ‘POD Concept’ and ‘Digital Covid Safety Tracks’— deployed at the company’s manufacturing units. These applications ensured workforce safety and business continuity by mitigating Covid-19 risks and were implemented via the Covid impact centre.
The POD, a workforce modularisation concept, introduced self-sufficient groups comprising operations and maintenance personnel, including contractors, with self-contained skill sets to perform specific jobs. The concept is built on a foundation of protocols, namely entry-exit norms, shift operating norms, and POD breach norms, which constitute the key guiding principles.
Digital Covid Safety Tracks successfully contained the spread of Covid-19 via real-time monitoring and compliance to standard operating guidelines. The tracks are broadly classified under three areas — risk mitigation, risk intelligence and compliance.
Tata Steel vice-president of safety, health and sustainability department, Sanjiv Paul, said: “At Tata Steel, we have implemented multiple tech innovations and leveraged our digital transformation journey to pursue workforce safety and business sustainability, aided by agile decision-making. This recognition will further motivate us to pursue excellence and prepare for the future.”
Tata Steel chief of safety department, Neeraj Sinha, received the award during the safety and health committee meeting in Brussels, Belgium, on November 18, 2021.
Apart from these initiatives, the company introduced a beacon and RFID-based Suraksha Card (safety card) for contact tracing of all employees within the plant, including work sites.
