RPM prioritizes and works to continuously improve support for our associates’ mental, emotional and physical wellbeing. Environmental, health and safety (EHS) is overseen by RPM’s Vice President of EHS through our center-led approach. This involves close coordination and cooperation with our operating group EHS leaders and other EHS professionals at our operating companies monitoring associate health and safety.

Our Core EHS Fundamentals facilitate prevention of and proactive response to safety incidents by requiring accountability at all RPM locations. We provide EHS guidance on best practices and reinforce shared responsibility for safety to all associates and leaders. Through our center-led EHS management program, we identify improvement opportunities and areas of focus both locally and on a consolidated, corporate wide basis. We deliver center-led EHS leadership training programs, implement EHS policies and procedures specific to our facilities and establish goals to address areas for improvement. We require an incident investigation report with a full root-cause analysis to be submitted to senior EHS management and operating company presidents for each recordable safety incident.

We embed safety into our culture through the deployment of regular center-led communications with plant and distribution center associates, as well as temporary workers. Through frequent and multifaceted methods of communication, compliance and safety topics remain at the forefront of our engagement with our global workforce to reinforce our safety commitments through education and action and to comply with regulatory obligations. 

EHS highlights from 2023 include: 

• 30 associates from engineering, maintenance and EHS attended a four-day Process Safety Management boot camp that covered relevant topics for high-risk facilities in the U.S. 
• 12 European engineering and operations associates attended our five-day Process Hazard Analysis Leadership training program in Belgium.  
• 2,200+ associates participated in Hazardous Waste Management Week, which focused on regional regulatory requirements and best practices in hazardous waste management efforts at our global operating facilities. 
• 80+ associates attended a special Safety Day event at our Malaysia facility, which included a presentation about safety rules, activities to reinforce the concept and an awards ceremony to recognize excellent EHS performance. 
• 200+ U.S. associates completed Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) certification training in 2023.
  
• ~1,200 associates reached by each of our nine toolbox talks, which cover topics such as retaliation, preventing workplace violence, discrimination, theft in the workplace, respect, cultural awareness, bribery and corruption, and conflict vs. bullying.