Health and Safety
Highlights
Our Approach
There is nothing more important in Rentokil Initial than ensuring that ‘Everyone Goes Home Safe’ at the end of their working day. Our colleagues, our families and our customers rely on this commitment. Health and safety will always be our first priority and there can be no compromise on this. Our colleagues are at the heart of THE RIGHT WAY plan and health and safety is embedded in this.
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Our Approach
Our management team has made safety the first item on the agenda at every meeting – this includes the Board, Executive Leadership Team and Senior Leadership Forum meetings.
Rentokil Initial’s health and safety approach comprises company-wide and country programmes, focusing on operational protocols and actions taken. The primary focus areas are where potential impacts are greatest, including workplace transport, working at height, occupational road risk, fumigation, working in areas of high voltage and machinery safety. Our underpinning policies are featured on the Rentokil Initial website along with our Health and Safety Policy.
The Company’s Safety, Health and Environment (SHE) team includes group, regional and country leaders, reflecting regional cultures, local legislation and operational capabilities. The SHE team establishes company-wide policies, programmes, learning and development and SHE initiatives. It also reviews businesses through the ‘Countries in Focus’ programme that targets specific countries or operations with unsatisfactory or deteriorating performance, or that are in the process of integration following acquisition or undergoing reorganisation. In addition, the Company’s HR team develops initiatives to address local Occupational Health needs, including both physical and mental wellbeing.
One of our key initiatives in 2019 was our new ‘Electricity’ SHE Golden Rules, and new Pink Note policy for ‘Entry into High Voltage Electricity Rooms’. These new company-wide requirements are designed to significantly improve our ability to protect our colleagues from the dangers associated with electricity on customer sites, and were developed following extensive consultation and agreement with senior operational, technical and SHE colleagues.
A range of resources were produced to support the deployment of the Golden Rules and the policy:
- Enhanced situational awareness training for managers, sales and service colleagues in recognition of the need to provide our colleagues with more visual guidance
- A specific training module for entry into high voltage rooms to support the new Pink Note
- A range of multi-language resources, including videos, to support the Golden Rules deployment
This initiative was rolled out in 2019 and has now been deployed across the organisation.
Safety Performance in 2019
In 2019 our safety standards continued to make significant improvement.
Our Lost Time Accident (LTA) rate improved by 16% and Working Days Lost (WDL) rate improved by 26% year-on-year – both exceeded our targets for 2019.
Our 5-year Safety Performance Chart
|
Key Indicators |
2019 |
2018 |
2017 |
2016 |
2015 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Lost Time Accidents (LTA) |
0.53 |
0.63 |
0.58 |
0.63 |
0.76 |
|
Working Days Lost (WDL) |
10.99 |
14.77 |
11.65 |
16.14 |
19.59 |
The LTA rate is calculated as the number of lost time accidents (injuries and illnesses) per 100,000 hours worked.
The WDL rate is calculated as the number of working days that colleagues could not work because of lost time accidents (injuries and illnesses) per 100,000 hours worked.
Awards and Recognition
In 2019, we were awarded the International Risk Initiative of the Year from the International Institute for Risk and Safety Management. The award recognises the successful (and continuing) implementation of our global SHE Golden Rules programme and the significant role it plays in sustaining our safety-first culture and keeping our colleagues safe.
Long-term Focus on Safety
The Company’s health and safety performance has shown a long-term improvement in Lost Time Accidents (LTA) and Working Days Lost (WDL).
Since 2014, our LTA rate has improved by 47%, and our WDL rate has improved by improved by nearly 62%.
As we look ahead to 2020 and beyond, our strategy will continue to focus on ensuring that ‘Everyone Goes Home Safe’ with our key objective being to improve our LTA and WDL rates to ensure all regions operate at World Class standards:
Major Incidents
There were no health and safety prosecutions pending or fines imposed on the Company in 2019. Regrettably, there were two fatal road traffic incidents this year.
In North America, one of our service vehicles slid on a slippery road surface and collided with the car in front, pushing it into oncoming traffic. A woman in the third party vehicle died as a result. In Colombia, a Hygiene technician sustained fatal injuries and died at the scene after his motorcycle collided with the rear of a truck.
We continue to enforce the Driving at Work minimum standards for all colleagues who drive. In 2018, we introduced an advanced ‘Behind the Wheel’ training for drivers in North America working in high traffic areas with a risk of high collision rates. In addition, at the end of last year we commenced the deployment of SafeDrivePod – a new mobile phone blocking technology which blocks calls whilst driving. This has been rolled out in Europe and implementation has recently commenced in our Pacific region.
Safety in Action
In 2019 we undertook a wide range of safety initiatives and programmes to enhance our safely performance.
Read moreSafety in Action
In 2019, we undertook a wide range of safety initiatives and programmes to enhance our safely performance. Here are seven examples:
1. SHE Capability Model
Our SHE strategy and approach continues to help deliver significant improvements in our SHE performance and capability and in 2019, introduced a new innovative process known as our “SHE Capability Model” which provides all leadership teams with a clear and consistent approach to measuring SHE capability against a range of key SHE criteria. The outcome of these assessments have enable our Country Leadership teams to understand their current SHE capability level of their business(es), and determine future plans, taking into account both global and local needs, which is particularly beneficial in an emerging market.
2. Fumigation
In 2019, we implemented a range of actions which have strengthened governance on fumigation and delivered improvements in safety and compliance with our global minimum standards. Actions include:
- Audits conducted in all fumigation operations
- Regional compliance reviews undertaken by the CEO and Regional MDs
- Development of new eLearning module for senior leaders, including Country MDs
3. Influencing Hearts and Minds/Colleague Behaviour
Our Latin America teams conduct various initiatives throughout the year that are centred around the theme of ‘ensuring everyone goes home safe’. One of these initiatives is called ‘Safety Moments’ which allows all our colleagues at every level the opportunity to share their personal experiences verbally or by ‘short’ 1-2 minute videos on safety issues that may affect them in their daily work. Sharing a personal safety moment can help us learn from each other, think about how others experiences might affect us, and what actions we can take to avoid the same thing happening to us. The initiative has in fact been so successful, that colleagues are now involving their family members in some of their safety moments.
Building upon the theme of ‘ensuring everyone goes home safe’, our teams in Latin America also make good use of the annual Children’s Day celebrations by organising fun-packed social events centred around safety, with their children. These events, along with initiatives such as Safety Moments, are highly pragmatic and help greatly to influence decision-making, driving a positive behavioural change and a shared sense of care across all our teams.
4. Safety Training
Supporting SHE capability development, the SHE leadership team produced an extensive portfolio of training courses for better management of health and safety. Available through the Company’s U+ platform with over 100 videos, these courses include: driving at work, vehicle inspection, motorcycle safety, thermal fogging, working with explosive atmospheres, safe working in roof voids, ladder safety, working at height and workplace transport safety. In addition, a global electrical safety campaign was introduced in 2018 following a colleague in Belgium suffering an electric shock. This has been further enhanced in 2019 with the deployment of new golden rules on electrical safety and the introduction of situational awareness training around areas of High Voltage for managers, sales and services colleagues.
5. Site Risk Assessment Reporting
The Company has developed in-house a Site Risk Assessment (SRA) smartphone app, to enable quick and effective risk assessment reporting to ensure that our colleagues health and safety is protected when working on customer sites. It is integrated to already existing sales and smartphone applications as a mandatory completion before starting service or completing a sales deal. Additional benefits include: reduced administration time (paper SRA documents were produced previously each month); capturing and recording of photographic evidence of hazards and time tagging, with easy access to all colleagues involved with the relevant customer.
An SRA Analytic Dashboard enables management to monitor the reporting, in terms of quantity and quality.
The SRA app has already been deployed in Singapore, Malaysia and Portugal and deployment has commenced in Austria, Belgium, Italy and Spain. In 2019, we integrated the app into our Sales app ‘Solo’. We now have an integrated app from Sales to Service. Deployment will be extended to a number of other countries in Asia, Europe, Latin America, UK & ROW in 2020.
6. New Origami Incident Management System
In 2019, we introduced the Origami incident management system, which helps better manage incidents by simplifying incident data collection and automating the investigation process – triggering corrective actions faster. This will help in preventing similar incidents occurring in future.
7. Road Safety
As a route-based company with approximately 19,000 vehicles, focusing on safe driving is a key SHE goal and ‘Minimum Standards for Driving at Work’ have been implemented across the Group. These standards have an increased focus on driver safety and are delivering improved driver and vehicle management. In support of these standards, online learning resources have been developed to support existing local driver training programmes, including:
- A Core Driving at Work e-learning Module – explains the key responsibilities that apply to all colleagues who drive on company business
- Vehicle Inspection – a three-part video which highlights the importance of vehicle inspections and demonstrates what items should be checked on a daily, weekly and monthly basis
- Motorcycle Safety – a video which explains the key responsibilities for any colleague who rides a motorcycle at work and provides a range of best practice tips on how to become a safer rider
In North America, our Driving Safety Program has been extremely successful in reducing the frequency and severity of road traffic collisions.
Another example of improving safe driving is the DriveWise campaign introduced in South Africa where driving is considered high risk due to the condition of the roads, crime and bad driver behaviour. The primary goal of the campaign is to create awareness around being a responsible, safe and alert driver. Certificate & recognition is provided to the ten best drivers whilst those with poor driving performance have to present a short talk on driver safety and their learnings from their driving behaviour at their next branch meeting.
Every month the DriveWise trophy is awarded to the top driver and the DriveWise flat wheel to the worst driver.
Case Study
Our French Workwear business has experienced several long-term absence incidents due to back and shoulder pain caused by the repetitive processes of moving a large number of garments and the manipulation of heavy mats.
In 2019 the business undertook a pilot to assess if the benefits of using Exoskeletons could improve posture and reduce any associated pain from this work. The pilot concluded that for certain roles the Exoskeletons were extremely effective, specifically for staff carrying out tasks were garments are loaded into vehicles above head high.
Exoskeletons have now been introduced across a number of our operations.
Managers learning about harness awareness
Case Study
In 2019, our North American health and safety team facilitated 15 training sessions across the United States focusing on educating managers on updated regulations for working at height. Colleagues included Pest and Ambius District Managers, Technical Service Managers, Bird Division Managers, Fumigation Managers and other select operational leads, who attended the three-day course.
The course included classroom learning, testing and hands-on training. Specifically, each participant practiced donning a harness, being lifted off the ground and deploying the rescue trauma straps. An outside expert contributed to the training by reviewing sections on risk assessment, equipment selection, usage, and inspection and rescue plans for each job.
Not only did the training provide extensive training on working at height but it also took advantage to cover a plethora of other topics such as ARC flash safety, aerial work platform practices, LTA management, ladder safety, dropped object protection, accident reporting procedures and how to use the new safety supply ordering portal.
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