Sustainability

Workplace health and safety

Our commitment to: Nobody gets hurt.

No job is worth doing if it can’t be done safely. Our uncompromising goal is that Nobody Gets Hurt. Protecting the health and safety of our people and our communities is core to who we are and drives what we do.

Managing safety takes a lot of hard work. It requires an unwavering culture. We use the phrase Actively Care to describe how we look out for each other. It’s how we interact with each other and how we step in when we see something that doesn’t look right.

We review and learn from all our incidents and near misses, considering not only what happened, but how bad it could have been. We identify failures and we fix the weak links that exist. We let leading indicators drive our behaviour. This ensures that we properly assess the risk of our operations so that we can respond to incidents before they happen.

Our progress is driven by a focus on leadership, workforce management, strong risk management and consistently following OIMS (Operations Integrity Management System).
“Imperial’s health and safety culture is industry-leading, in part because our culture is personally meaningful to every individual. To me, that means everyone, at every level of the company, is encouraged to make good, safe decisions that protect employees, contractors, neighbours and communities — including my own family, because safety comes home everyday.” 
Chris Kett

Loss prevention supervisor and OIMS coordinator

0.27

total recordable incident rate in 2018

Life saving actions

Let’s face it, working in the oil and gas industry requires managing risks each and every day, some of which could have high consequences. We identified the most dangerous activities that are responsible for the majority of serious safety incidents. Lifting heavy loads, working with electricity, and working at elevated height are just a few examples. Then we developed a series of policies and procedures called Life Saving Actions, to ensure these activities are done safely every time. 
For example, our Kearl oil sands operation faces a major risk with daily interactions between light-duty vehicles (the trucks you see daily on the road) and our heavy-duty vehicles (including some of the biggest haul trucks in the world). To reinforce just how deadly an interaction could be, we developed the video below.

Health & wellness

We care about the health and wellbeing of our people. It doesn’t matter if a health issue is work related or not – we want to know about it and we want to prevent it.

We have health centres across Canada equipped with nurses and doctors who help us provide a safe and healthy workplace and respond to health concerns of our employees. We offer support programs including:

  • Tracking potential workplace health risks
  • Providing the latest in hearing protection and practices
  • Monitoring worker health in the field
  • Focusing on the personal health of employees (awareness and education)
  • Employee Family Assistance Programs (EFAP)
  • Supporting community health studies

Policies

This is a heavily regulated space, and we comply with all applicable laws and regulations. But we view the appropriate law or regulations as a minimum expectation. When a regulation does not exist, we develop a standard. When we do not think the regulation goes far enough, we exceed it. Ethics, legal compliance and integrity is our commitment.

Health Policy

Safety Policy

Product Safety Policy

Alcohol and Drug Policy

Sustainability report

Our Sustainability Report describes our environmental, social and governance performance.
Learn more