How OYAK Cement Reduced Lost - Time Injuries by 58% Through Leadership and Behavioural Safety

Volkan Pılgır｜OYAK Cement OHS Manager

For nearly a decade, OYAK Cement’s lost-time injury frequency rate had moved horizontally — locked between 6 and 8, year after year, despite every effort made. We decided it was time to say: enough. Every week, a worker at OYAK Cement went home injured because of an accident. Fifty to sixty lost-time incidents per year — and while gradual improvements had been recorded over time, the decisive breakthrough the organisation needed had never come. The company had the procedures, the controls, and the compliance records. What it did not yet have was the one thing no regulation can mandate: a culture where every individual, at every level, genuinely owns safety as a personal responsibility.

That recognition was the starting point of Project2425.

The Diagnosis: Rules Were Never the Problem

In 2022, OYAK Cement's Lost Time Incident Frequency Rate (LTI-FR) stood at 5.99 — nearly six times the benchmark of ~1.00 sustained by the world's leading cement companies. Analysis of incident trends revealed that many events were linked to behavioural choices influenced by workplace culture, leadership visibility, risk perception, and organisational norms.

For years, safety efforts had focused primarily on the physical environment: identifying hazards, improving procedures, tightening controls. These efforts were necessary. They were not sufficient. Visible leadership was weak, and safety conversations — when they occurred — focused on compliance rather than genuine understanding. Something more fundamental was needed. Sustainable safety excellence is achieved when employees act safely, not because they are supervised, but because safe behaviour becomes a shared social norm.

"Sustainable safety excellence is achieved when employees act safely, not because they are supervised, but because safe behaviour becomes a shared social norm."

The Programme: Project2425

Launched on 1 February 2023, Project2425 is OYAK Cement's company-wide cultural transformation programme, built on a single foundational principle: safety is not achieved through rules alone, but through behaviour, leadership, and shared ownership.

Using 2022 as its reference year, Project2425 set a 24% reduction in LTI-FR by 2024 and a further 25% reduction by 2025 — milestones calibrated against a seven-year trajectory to reach world-class performance by 2030. Every target was embedded into individual performance objectives, from the General Manager down.

Crucially, the programme addressed root causes — unsafe behaviours shaped by habit, time pressure, and organisational norms — rather than adding more rules.

The Method: The DOST Concept

At the operational core of Project2425 is the DOST Concept — Behaviour-Based Safety Tours. In Turkish, "dost" means friend. — a name that defines the philosophy of every conversation.

DOST replaces inspections with dialogue: structured, seven-step conversations built on trust and mutual respect rather than correction. The methodology follows a seven-step framework:

Every DOST conversation is digitally recorded and analysed through the DEKRA Adaptive Platform, enabling behavioral trend analysis, risk pattern identification, performance tracking, and targeted interventions across all sites.

The Catalyst: Leadership Without Exception

No cultural transformation survives without visible leadership. Project2425 made this non-negotiable. In Year 1, all designated observers — including the General Manager — completed Safety Coaching Training, focused on the psychology of dialogue: listening without judging, questioning without threatening. Individual DOST targets were assigned to all and integrated into the performance management system, with no exceptions based on seniority. In Year 2, 50 blue-collar employees joined the 710 existing management observers as full, equal participants. Safety leadership became everyone’s shared responsibility. With 760 trained observers from CEO to operator: a human infrastructure for cultural change.

"Safety is no longer something imposed — it is something lived. When the CEO walks the floor not to inspect, but to listen, the message to every employee is clear: your safety matters to us personally."

The Results: Targets Set. Targets Exceeded.

The numbers validate the approach — though, as the programme's architects are quick to note, the numbers do not tell the full story. Behind every data point is a conversation that happened, a commitment that was kept, and a worker who went home safely.

In 2023, OYAK Cement completed 17,703 DOST safety conversations, surpassing the 13,858 target and achieving a 27.5% reduction in LTI-FR in a single year. By the close of 2025, results had significantly surpassed every target set at the programme's outset, demonstrating that Project2425 delivered not a short-term campaign, but a sustainable cultural transformation.

Behind these figures is a reality that matters beyond the data: through DOST, we reached each employee in the plant an average of four times per year — not with an inspection, but with a genuine conversation about safety. Notably, the reduction in only cement operations reached 69.17% — a figure that places OYAK Cement not merely ahead of its own prior performance, but in the territory of international industry leaders. No fatalities or permanent disability incidents occurred in 2023 or 2024.

Beyond the Numbers: A Culture Transformed

The most profound shift is visible in behaviour: employees now actively intervene — with colleagues, with contractors, across hierarchies — without waiting to be told. The culture has shifted from compliance to ownership.

In the first year, DOST Theatre events were held across all plants: interactive, dramatised scenarios allowing all employees to experience how DOST works in practice. DOST data confirms a consistent decline in unsafe behaviour categories — not because observation has intensified, but because behaviours are genuinely changing. Employees can be motivated to work safely even when no manager is watching — perhaps the truest measure of a safety culture.

International Recognition: The WCA Health & Safety Award 2025

In 2025, Project2425 received the World Cement Association (WCA) Health & Safety Award, one of the industry's highest distinctions, recognising OYAK Cement's success in translating leadership commitment into measurable improvements in safety culture and operational performance. The award jury specifically highlighted the transformation journey initiated through strong top-management commitment and its impact on both employee behaviour and organisational safety culture.

For OYAK Cement, the award is a confirmation: the approach is right, and the journey is not over.

The Road to 2030

Project2425 was always the first act of a longer story. Project2030 continues the journey with annual LTI-FR reduction targets built on the same behavioural infrastructure — aimed at reaching 0.98 by 2030. What began as a programme has evolved into a way of working. Project2425 demonstrates that world-class safety performance is built through leadership, trust, meaningful dialogue, and thousands of daily decisions made by people who genuinely care for one another.

As OYAK Cement employees, we are fully aware that reducing the LTI-FR from 2.50 to 1.00 will be significantly more challenging than the progress achieved so far. Reaching this target will require every OYAK employee — across technical, administrative, finance, HR, sales, and subcontractor roles — to place an even stronger focus on safety and take greater personal ownership of it.

Across OYAK Cement, safety is no longer viewed as a management requirement, but as a shared organisational value that continues to shape the company's journey towards 2030.

AUTHOR

Volkan Pılgır｜
OHS Manager — Industrial Activities VP, OYAK Çimento

Since 2019, he has been serving as OHS Manager at OYAK Çimento Fabrikaları A.Ş., where he leads occupational health and safety strategy across the group’s cement, concrete, and aggregate operations in Turkey and internationally.