The International Day for Health and Safety at Work, observed on April 28th each year, is a global campaign aimed at promoting safe, healthy, and sustainable workplaces. It serves as a reminder of the importance of occupational safety and health in preventing work-related injuries, illnesses, and fatalities.
- Beauparc’s commitment to health and safety
Health and safety have always been a top priority in Beauparc (parent company of Panda) as our people are our greatest asset. The last two years has seen a targeted campaign to drive the business to new levels of safety performance. We have worked with Dupont to create a strategy that builds a framework for H&S (Health and Safety) and we launched our safer together campaign to concentrate on 5 steps – Lifesaving Rules, Tours and Awards, Governance, SHEQ Academy and Champions.
Importantly, we focused on leading not lagging indicators to drive down accident numbers and severity. We now have a new learning system (LMS) to bring the message of safety directly to our people and give them targeted learnings. Hopefully, everyone will have noticed the large amount of investment in our sites with new traffic management, machine access and guarding and fire systems as a minimum.
Our SLT (Senior Leadership Team) have led the charge with over 130 site tours led personally by our leaders where we have the chance to talk and reinforce our safety vision. The important thing to note is that this is a journey and while we have done so much there is also more to do, but we are 100% committed.
- Specific measures and protocols used to ensure employee well-being
A dedicated wellbeing hub is available to all employees via Beauparc’s SharePoint. It contains useful advice, suggestions and guidance on specific monthly topics aimed at improving overall wellbeing and awareness.
Additionally, Beauparc became a corporate member of the Lighthouse Charity during 2023, making emotional, physical and financial wellbeing support available to all employees and their families. As the relationship with Lighthouse matures, we will be seeking to train wellbeing champions throughout the business so that they are best placed to signpost colleagues and friends to the relevant agencies/charities for help.
Subject matter on wellbeing is also distributed via the Beauparc news channel. This content can be made accessible to all employees by way of inclusion at team meetings, toolbox talks and the Lighthouse programme of onsite support. As well as the day to day mechanisms, Lighthouse also offer critical incident support should it ever be needed.
- Success stories illustrating the effectiveness of our safety initiatives
We have spoken to several managers this week on site tours and had some heart-warming feedback.
In Dublin we introduced CCTVs to monitor at key areas on the machines and conveyors. This gave a central point of control and command and has helped reduce the number of blockages but also to increase production. We witnessed safety and operational benefit hand in hand.
One of our newest acquisitions ‘Peak Waste’ in the UK has closed out nearly all SIF (Serious Injury and Fatality) actions raised and onboarded 100% of the workforce onto the LMS. A site tour following a recent board meeting showed considerable improvement in not only the physical risks but also the approach to safety of the entire team.
These are just two and we have seen countless examples of safety improvements across the business as we drive our goal of being safer together.
- Future plans and strategies to enhance health and safety standards
We are moving from a dependent to an independent safety culture state (Dupont Bradley curve) and everything we are working on over the next two years is to establish this. We are launching our Leadership programme to raise competence and launching our internal Assurance programme to help our teams understand our standards and bring them to life. We are focusing on Critical Risks within our portfolio so we strive to reduce the risk profile and ensure the things that can really hurt us are being controlled more tightly. We are also driving safe environmental practice and scoring our sites performance as well as training our people on the requirements of meeting our authorisations to operate.
- Data demonstrating our dedication to a safe work environment
We have seen a huge 73% reduction in the number of lost time incidents in the business over the last two years of the campaign. Over 70% of our workforce are actively using the LMS system and doing targeted SHEQ (Safety, Health, Environment, & Quality) learnings based on their job role and the risk profile. We have completed audits of all our sites raising over 400 SIFs and closing out over 90%. Most importantly we have completed over 1200 tours last year alone that raised over 12 thousand hazard reports (HITs) and closed out over 83% of these by working together and putting safety at the top of everyone’s agenda.
Our dedication to safety is evident in our results. From specific measures to success stories, we’re driving a culture of care. Looking ahead, we’re focused on further enhancing standards. With data backing our commitment, safety remains our top priority. Together, we’re shaping a safer future.
