Health and safety

Nothing is more important than the health, safety and wellbeing of our people and we remain committed to improving our safety performance.

At South32, we are united by our belief that everyone can go home safe and well, every day. Our ‘safety guarantee’ is our internal approach to creating a sense of chronic unease to enhance our safety culture.

Every day, we ask our people to reflect on whether they can guarantee both their safety and that of their colleagues when executing their role. If the answer is no, then the challenge is to stop and ask what needs to be done differently to provide that guarantee.

Our focus areas

Driving continuous improvement

We aim to deliver a step change in how we manage safety by focusing on shifting mindsets through leadership, empowering our people, reducing risk through effective controls, and strengthening systems and metrics.

Fatality and serious injury elimination

We manage material safety risks proactively and with a focus on eliminating fatalities and serious injuries.

Contractor management

As a significant portion of our workforce, improving how we engage and manage contractors is a key aspect of our health and safety management approach.

Health and hygiene management

Our activities present a range of health risks, including psychosocial risks such as sexual harassment and other workplace-related factors, that require continued attention and management across our business.

Our performance

We use a range of metrics to monitor and assess our safety performance. This includes lagging performance indicators which focus on incidents or near misses that have occurred, and leading indicators which aim to detect and provide advanced warning of latent safety hazards.

You can find out more about these metrics in our Sustainability Databook 2025 or explore more about our safety and health progress in our Annual Report 2025.

Annual Report 2025

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Sustainability Databook 2025

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FY25 snapshot

60%

reduction in high-potential injury and illness frequency¹

25%+

reduction in both total recordable injury frequency and lost time injury frequency¹

16,000+

participants in our Lead Safely Every Day training program, since its launch in FY23

¹ Frequency rates are per million hours worked. Incidents are included where South32 controls the work location or controls the work activity.

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Our approach

Keeping our people safe and well underpins the culture we aspire to and sets our expectations of each other.

Safety

We continue work to embed our ‘safety guarantee’, knowing that we cannot be truly successful unless everyone goes home safe and well at the end of every shift.

Risk managementExpandCollapse

Our health and safety and risk management systems have been designed with the aim to prevent and mitigate potential exposure to material health and safety risks.

Our internal safety standard defines safety-related fatality risks and minimum critical controls for their management, and our internal health standard defines the performance requirements and controls for managing significant health and illness risks.

We empower and expect our people to act (including by stopping work) when there is a potential or actual threat to health and safety.

Our risk and event management system, Global360, supports our workforce in their efforts to proactively identify and report hazards and events. We investigate actual and potential significant events that could have led to severe injury or higher outcomes, put controls in place and share the learnings across our organisation.

In line with the three lines operating model, we have assurance functions independent of our operating activities that provide assurance against our own comprehensive internal standards

Training and competencyExpandCollapse

Effective safety risk management relies on our workforce being properly trained and equipped with the right competencies for their roles.

To enable this, operational training programs are in place with periodic reviews undertaken in line with our internal training standard. Role-required competencies are defined and managed in skills matrices, which are reviewed every two years to maintain alignment with material health and safety risks, as well as regulatory, legislative and internal safety standard requirements.

Our training, engagement and awareness activities include:

Health and safety inductions for new employees and contractors, covering potential health and safety exposures;
Safety leadership training and coaching to establish safety leadership expectations and foster a consistent approach to safety risk management across the organisation;
Ongoing risk-based health and safety training for relevant employees and contractors;
Sharing key health and safety information with employees and contractors throughout the business; and
Engaging our workforce in safety decision-making through the appointment of health and safety representatives, the formation of health and safety committees, and participation in safety-related meetings.

Leadership capabilityExpandCollapse

A culture that prioritises safety as a core value can enhance individual and collective contributions to safety performance.

Our Lead Safely Every Day (LSED) program includes safety leadership capability workshops and coaching, and has been delivered to over 16,000 leaders since its launch in FY23. The program is leader-led and locally facilitated, allowing for customisation as appropriate for the different locations and operating contexts of our operations, projects and offices.

While the program’s rollout is tailored, the overall objectives remain to form a common understanding of what it means to be a safety leader at South32, embed a consistent approach to safety risk management, and empower our people to speak up so that together we can prevent serious injuries and fatalities.

Protections against reprisal for reporting a work-related hazardous situation or acting on a safety concern are embedded in our internal safety standard and outlined in our Speak Up Policy. 

Read more about our LSED training program in our Annual Report 2025.

Security and critical incident managementExpandCollapse

Our internal security, crisis and emergency management (SCEM) standard outlines requirements for responding to critical incidents and emergencies, with the aim to protect people, communities, the environment and our assets.

It mandates that emergency plans are well-resourced, implemented and tested regularly, with designated response teams and business continuity plans in place.

The SCEM standard also defines the performance requirements for security risk management, including conformance with the Voluntary Principles on Security and Human Rights (VPSHR). Operational security teams must comply with the VPSHR, while private security providers must adhere to the International Code of Conduct for Private Security Providers and complete VPSHR-aligned training every two years.

Health

We aim to manage the range of health risks posed by our activities. We also recognise psychosocial risks, such as sexual harassment and other workplace-related factors, as health-related risks that require continued attention and management across our business.

Potential occupational exposuresExpandCollapse

Our approach to managing material health risks includes identifying material health hazards and setting thresholds for occupational exposure, Occupational Exposure Limits (OELs), that are considered safe and are not likely to cause adverse health impacts.

We implement a range of controls to prevent and reduce the risk of OEL exceedances, including:

Proactive controls such as real-time environmental monitoring, mandated minimum controls such as ventilation systems, dust control equipment and respiratory protective equipment, and controls for the safe use, labelling and storage of chemical substances; and
Reactive controls such as health surveillance, biological monitoring, and reporting and investigating exceedances.

Health and wellbeingExpandCollapse

Employees and contractors have access to occupational health services, including medical surveillance and screening, to help prevent and detect early-stage adverse health effects from occupational exposures.

Our employees also have access to non-occupational health services covering chronic disease management, health education and referrals for non-work-related treatment.

We offer risk-based preventative health measures at our workplaces, including access to fitness facilities, general vaccines, and malaria and HIV/AIDS programs, where applicable.

HIV/AIDS management is embedded in the occupational health processes at our Southern African operations and involves promotion of HIV counselling, testing and illness management. Positive cases are referred for treatment and we offer follow up as part of our chronic illness management program.

Community healthExpandCollapse

Community health risks are identified and managed in accordance with our internal health standard, which defines the minimum requirements for monitoring programs when a potential health risk is identified.

Community exposure to air emissions, such as dust, is monitored and managed at and in the vicinity of our operations.

Our approach to managing ambient air quality includes:

Applying national and global regulatory requirements for assessing ambient air quality;
Air quality monitoring programs with real-time monitoring and compliance monitoring capabilities;
Implementation of a hierarchy of controls to mitigate air emissions risk, minimise impacts and support compliance with internal and regulatory requirements;
Maintaining data from our monitoring programs to support performance analysis, trend identification, and more informed decision-making to enhance air quality protection; and
Membership of industry associations, such as ICMM and the International Manganese Institute, which provide guidance and research into the best practice management of potential community health impacts.

Read more about our approach to managing air emissions in our Annual Report 2025.