14 November 2025

Kinross employees gather at a recent critical risk management bootcamp.

Industry Partner Spotlight

This story was provided by Kinross, a CIM Industry Partner, and appears in the November 2025 issue of CIM Magazine (view it in flip format here).

A people-centric approach to health and safety

Kinross Gold goes beyond compliance with its Safeground initiative

Step foot on any one of Kinross Gold’s six operating mines worldwide and you’ll quickly become familiar with the company’s innovative approach to safety. Whether communicated through safety-related media displayed throughout the site, shared in pre-shift meetings or presented at recent critical risk management bootcamps, one word is ubiquitous, encompassing Kinross’s approach to safety in all five of its operating languages: Safeground.

Three years ago, Kinross started on a journey to reinforce a unified vision that went well past compliance, delving into the physical, psychological and psychosocial aspects of safety. In 2024, following deep input from frontline employees, the company introduced its Safeground brand across its operations. It is a key element of Kinross’s global health and safety strategy, which emphasizes people, systems and technology, fosters a values-based culture and makes safety fundamental to resilient operations and innovation.

“Safeground puts frontline workers at the centre of safety decisions at Kinross, supporting the development of safer work environments today and for the future. The intention is that all individuals be safe and feel safe at work and beyond. It’s a life philosophy, really,” said Claude Schimper, executive vice-president and chief operating officer at Kinross. “Its impact is already clear in the first year, largely due to our collaborative development process.”

Frontline workers were key in creating a holistic safety brand emphasizing trust, collaboration and ongoing learning. Safeground’s philosophy and decision-making framework are based on six core principles:

• People are the solution
• Humility is a superpower
• Errors are normal
• Learning over blame
• How we respond matters
• Context drives behaviour

Functioning both as an occupational health and safety framework and as guidance for principle-based leadership, Safeground encourages employees to challenge the status quo, participate in decision-making and actively contribute to a safe environment. The framework also supports leaders in responding with deliberation and integrity, highlighting the importance of authenticity, humility and care to foster trust and embody its foundational principles.

“We had to take a deep dive into the nature of critical incidents, where they originated and how they can best be mitigated. Individual decisions in many cases are that inflection point. People really are the solution,” Schimper reflected. “The choices our leaders and workers make every day are incredibly meaningful, which is why we’ve displayed our Safeground guiding principles at key decision-making points. When we foster an environment where we encourage learning over blame, we all benefit.”

Kinross’s Safety Excellence program forms part of the company’s approach to operationalizing Safeground. In the past two years, more than 15,000 employees and business partners worldwide have completed the Safety Excellence training, logging extensive learning hours. The training is also now a part of both corporate and site-level onboarding to ensure it is introduced from the start, forming a solid foundation for new hires and reflecting the importance of working safely at Kinross.

This philosophy has also improved the company’s critical risk management system by integrating feedback from frontline employees and securing active leadership support. These measures are designed to enhance the effectiveness of the safety process and further strengthen the organization’s ability to prevent and mitigate serious incidents.

In addition to its safety-focused initiatives, Kinross intends to continue expanding the Safeground brand to support employee well-being, foster respectful workplaces and bolster operational excellence.

“At the end of the day, we want everyone at Kinross to go home safely,” Schimper concluded. “We want to empower our team to think and act in a manner that puts people first, in everything they do.”