Occupational Health and Safety

Occupational Health and Safety Management at Türk Telekom

Health and Safety is one of our company’s material topics to protect our employees. At Türk Telekom, we consider the interconnected nature of OHS with sustainability, and we transparently disclose our efforts in this area through local reporting standards in Türkiye and global reporting standards.

We apply the high standards set by the ISO 45001 Occupational Health and Safety Management System Standard. All sites of our company are certified according to the ISO 45001 standard. In addition, our OHS Management System covers 16,803 employees, 100% of our total employees. We always prioritise the health and safety of our employees, our most valuable assets, who work all over our country, in different geographical conditions and under challenging climate conditions.
Accordingly, as Türk Telekom, we comply with all national and international legal regulations on occupational health and safety. We strive to prevent/minimise occupational accidents and occupational diseases and to create an occupational safety culture. We work to reduce/prevent occupational accidents before they occur by recording and evaluating occupational safety risks. As Türk Telekom, we take measures at our work sites for the health and safety of our suppliers, business partners and customers. We provide regular training to ensure that our employees have sufficient knowledge on occupational health and safety.

Contrary to the traditional approach, our company considers occupational health and safety not as a one-time goal to be achieved, but as a continuous process.

Risk Management in OHS

We conduct our risk assessments in line with the work we carry out in all our fields of operation. Thanks to near-miss notifications, we ensure that action is taken before potential risks occur. We work proactively to prevent similar accidents by taking measures against root causes identified through accident investigation reports.

Through field audits and OHS committees, we work to prevent dangerous situations and behaviours that may occur in the field and actualise the topics brought to the committees through employee representatives. In 2023, approximately 12,500 inspections on occupational health and safety were conducted at regional directorates.
We ensure that actions are taken in accordance with legal requirements in communication with the relevant units. We strengthen internal controls through field inspections to reduce the frequency of accidents in the field of occupational health and safety. We record company targets under this topic on the target cards of relevant employees (OHS professionals and managers) and evaluate them through the performance system.
We take into account the opinions and suggestions of our employees through employee representatives and OHS committees. At the same time, we maintain our continuous improvement efforts by using systems that track near-miss, hazardous situation or behaviour notifications.
At Türk Telekom, we focus on preventing and reducing occupational accidents and diseases by effectively identifying hazards and conducting risk assessments to reduce them to acceptable levels. These assessments cover all our employees and workplaces. We carry out location and activity-based risk assessments covering all situations, including routine or non-routine situations, subcontractor work and groups requiring special policies. The right of our employees to refrain from working is guaranteed by law in the event of serious and imminent danger.

OHS Training

All our employees receive occupational health and safety training as a legal obligation. These training include basic OHS and technical training. In addition to specific training such as working at heights and working in confined spaces specific to the jobs of our employees, we ensure that our first aid assistants in emergency teams are certified and become official first aid officers. We provide face-to-face OHS Basic, Health, Job Onboarding, Logistics, Risk Assessment, Returning to Work after a Work Accident, Employee Representative and practical training.
We increased our training hours in occupational health and safety to over 60 thousand in 2023.

OHS in Value Chain

At Türk Telekom, we not only take comprehensive occupational health and safety measures to ensure the safety of our employees at the highest level, but also encourage our subcontractors to take these measures. We improve OHS processes through specifications and inspections together with our subcontractors. Through these efforts, we aim for all our business partners and employees to work in a safe and healthy environment.

We require our suppliers or subcontractors to carry out all their works and operations within the scope of OHS Legislation, and we ensure their control through specifications and subsequent inspections. We also select our suppliers in line with the specified conditions.