VISION ZERO Award: AAA honoured in Sydney

It was at the 23rd World Congress on Safety and Health at Work that the Accident Insurance Association (AAA) was awarded the Vision Zero Prize by the International Social Security Association (ISSA) in Sydney, Australia, in November 2023. Held every three years, the World Congress is a unique international forum that brings together around 3,000 experts and decision-makers from the world of work, social security and the public sector, as well as employers’ and workers’ representatives from all over the world. It serves as a platform for exchanging ideas, research findings and best practice on highly topical issues in the field of occupational health and safety.

Vision Zero was one of the major themes of the event. In his opening speech at the Congress, ISSA President Dr Azman stressed, “The Vision Zero strategy enables every workplace, every company and every industry in every region of the world to build its own culture of prevention.” Launched in 2017 at the World Congress in Singapore, Vision Zero has since become a global prevention strategy.

At the award ceremony, 21 Vision Zero partners were presented with the Vision Zero Award by the ISSA as a reward for their invested efforts to advance the level of safety, health and well-being at international or national level, and within companies.

AAA, a member of the ISSA, was awarded the Vision Zero Award for its ability to implement VISION ZERO at national level. In his closing speech at the World Congress, ISSA Secretary General Marcelo Caetano highlighted the example of Luxembourg’s national VISION ZERO strategy. Along with Singapore, Luxembourg was one of the first countries to implement this strategy at national level.

Since 2016, VISION ZERO in Luxembourg has focused on a strategy to prevent work-related accidents, commuting accidents and occupational diseases. This strategy reflects the joint commitment of the national partners to breathing new life into occupational health and safety and to mobilising all the stakeholders concerned, both employers and employees. VISION ZERO does not mean that there is no risk at work, but that potential sources of risk must be reduced as far as possible in order to avoid accidents, particularly serious and fatal ones. It is a continuous improvement approach aimed at raising awareness and training employees to adopt safe and responsible behaviour, while relying on the leadership of company managers.

One of the objectives of the initial VISION ZERO charter from 2016 to 2022 was to achieve by 2022 a 20% reduction in the national frequency rate, all sectors combined, of work-related accidents compared with the reference year 2014. Before the pandemic, in 2019, a promising 15% reduction had already been achieved. The years 2020 and 2021 were very special because of the pandemic. Therefore, they aren’t taken into account from a statistical point of view, because the various confinements and the use of teleworking distort the data. Finally, the national frequency rate has been reduced by more than 34%, from 5.37% in 2014 to 3.52% in 2022. The objective of the first phase of VISION ZERO has thus been largely exceeded, while taking into account the slight impact of COVID in 2022.

On the strength of the success of the first phase from 2016 to 2022 and given the importance of this issue, the initiators of VISION ZERO, the AAA, the UEL and the INDR, have decided to continue their efforts in the field of occupational health and safety and to target risk sectors in particular. The new phase of VISION ZERO 2023 – 2030 was presented for the first time at the 15th Occupational Safety and Health Forum on 26 October 2022. The government had previously expressed its support for the national strategy at its Council meeting on the 24th October. The institutional partners and companies are now all on board.

Here are some of the key actions carried out as part of VISION ZERO:

• Two cross-media campaigns, featuring victims of work-related accidents and targeting specific sectors;
  Launch of a trilingual internet portal (visionzero.lu), designed to raise awareness and inform companies about occupational health and safety;
• Introduction of a bonus-malus system in 2019 by the AAA, making it possible to reduce or increase the basic contribution rate in order to encourage accident insurance contributors to invest more in preventing work-related accidents;
• Organising the annual Occupational Health and Safety Forum and awarding the Occupational Health and Safety Award every two years;
• Production of new prevention materials (publications, prevention recommendations and videos);
• Implementation of a series of awareness-raising measures and specific actions by institutional partners and Luxembourg companies;
• Launch of the second phase of VISION ZERO from 2023 to 2030, aiming for a further 20% reduction in the national frequency rate compared with 2019, with a particular focus on high-risk sectors through the implementation of a range of more targeted actions.