One of our key health and safety principles is leadership commitment and, in 2024, we continued with our Health and Safety Leadership Excellence programme.
This two-day session for senior managers and leaders was developed by the UK Health and Safety Executive and certified by the National Examination Board in Occupational Safety and Health. It highlights the critical role of leadership in driving a strong safety culture, and the ethical responsibility of senior managers to lead by example. By the close of the year, 89% of target delegates had completed the programme.
To complement this, we also ran an Effective Safety Coaching Programme for employees with supervisory or managerial responsibilities. With more than 100 people participating, this has helped us to instil a strong and consistent safety culture across the Group.
Across both programmes, we asked participants to make safety commitments, documenting the things that they would do personally to raise the culture of safety within their respective businesses. More than 1,900 of these personal commitments were made – reflecting the importance of safety to our leaders and the sense of ownership they share.
The feedback from participants is a good reflection of these programmes and the safety culture they are helping to instil:
Safety coaching as a topic is especially applicable to the field teams. I thought the training approached how to sway safety norms in the field from a number of different approaches which is especially helpful because people will adopt coaching styles they are comfortable with and collaboratively this will help influence change.
– INSPIRE Environmental delegate
The course challenged my way of thinking on health and safety and leadership. I think using people’s experiences and situations made it relatable.
– FoundOcean delegate
A well delivered and interesting course, with thought provoking subjects and useful methods that can be immediately implemented into our work.
– Partrac delegate
I found the session to be filled with eye-openers and valuable insights that helped me reach a different perspective and level of understanding.
-CAPE Holland delegate
The course was a highly positive experience and left a lasting impression. I feel more equipped and inspired to drive health and safety improvements within my organisation.
-Balltec delegate
