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Our dedication to safety drives us to continually look for ways to improve our practices. We believe that all injuries can be prevented, and our goal is zero harm. Achieving our aim requires us all to take responsibility for observing, and promoting, good health and safety practices.
Safe
travels
By its nature,
the transport industry involves the risk of injury to passengers, employees and
third parties. This is why we take seriously our duty of care to ensure that
our customers, stakeholders and any third parties we interact with can use our
services, and our people can carry out their work, safely.
Our thousands
of employees transport more than 1.8million passengers every day on thousands
of buses, trains and other vehicles, sharing increasingly congested road and
rail infrastructure with other users. The industry we operate in therefore has
significant inherent safety challenges, but we are determined to achieve our
goal of zero harm.
Our
Health and Safety Policy
The safety and
security of our customers, employees and contractors is fundamental to
everything we do. Everyone should be able to do their job, or use our services,
safely. Our commitments to providing a safe and healthy environment for all our
stakeholders are outlined in our Group Health and Safety Policy, our Code of
Ethics and our Supplier Code of Conduct.
Group
Health and Safety Policy
Code
of Ethics
Supplier
Code of Conduct
Safety
Governance
The overall
structure of FirstGroup’s safety governance represents a balance between
delegated decision making to the operating company and retaining strategic
direction, oversight and challenge from the Board.
Strong
leadership from the top is a key feature of our safety culture. Our Responsible
Business Committee, involving the Chief Executive Officer and members of the
Group Executive Committee, together with First Bus and First Rail senior
leadership teams, oversee the Group’s safety strategy and the performance,
procedures and practices across all operating companies.
The Responsible
Business Committee meets at least three times a year and the Deputy Company
Secretary acts as Committee Secretary. The Executive Committee oversees the
Group’s safety strategy and the performance, it takes a proactive approach to
improving safety performance and undertakes ‘deep dives’ on specific topics of
our high-risk areas to understand root causes and inform safety interventions.
It is the responsibility of the Committee to promote a positive safety culture
throughout the businesses and report back to the Board on safety trends,
actions and other deliberations.
Our approach to
safety governance is characterised by:
· The Committee overseeing material safety matters and risks across the Group, as well as reviewing targets in respect of safety performance.
· Management of the relevant operating company having primary responsibility for the design and implementation of an effective safety management system, and accountability for safety performance.
· The safety function providing advice directly and through a series of networks across the Group.
· Across all our divisions we implement targeted biannual assurance reviews of our safety management systems, improvements and performance. We use data analysis and insights to prioritise our efforts in improving safety through both technology and behaviour.
Management
Systems
We maintain
robust safety management systems throughout the Group, and a clear focus on
ensuring compliance with policies, processes and procedures.
First Bus is
accredited to ISO 45001 and ISO 14001 and merged the two standards across the
division. Consolidating these standards demonstrates a comprehensive approach
to ensuring both safety and environmental controls are aligned and subject to
independent scrutiny by specialists Alcumus ISOQAR. We have improved our safety management
with contractors through a new permit system which helps to ensure that safety
standards are upheld across all aspects of operations and by everyone working
on our sites.
Within First
Rail there is a comprehensive safety management system focused on understanding
the safety risk profile of the company and ensuring suitable risk mitigations
are in place. Each company reviews and updates their risk profile in light of
new/updated legislation, changes within the business operation(s) such as new
train introductions, audits, recommendations from accidents and incidents and
horizon scanning. Some of the functions within the businesses already have ISOs
such 9001, 18001 and 45001 to allow for continuous improvement. The aim is to
work towards achieving more of these accreditations.
Be
Safe
Be Safe, our
safety behavioural change programme, builds on these management systems, making
safety a personal core value for every employee. Be Safe focuses on our
objective of zero harm and making safety a personal core value for our
employees. The programme forms part of our Code of Ethics for all employees and
promotes the positive reinforcement of safety critical behaviours through
regular touchpoints (daily positive safety coaching interactions) and debriefs
(weekly collective discussion and feedback on touchpoints delivered).
Touchpoints happen across the Group every day, from senior management down to
front line managers.
We abide by our
Be Safe Principles of:
· Knowledge - Directing our greatest efforts at the key safety behaviours that will help reduce incidents.
· Learning - Taking learnings from the reporting of incidents and near misses to continuously improve workplace safety.
· Recognition - Focusing on acknowledging colleagues 'doing it right' and positively reinforcing these actions whilst continuing to challenge unsafe behaviours..
· Openness - Ensuring regular safety conversations and coaching activities take place and communication is open and honest.
· Courage - Empowering our employees to accept responsibility for their own safety and that of colleagues, ensuring that if something is assessed to be unsafe, we have the courage to stop and find a safer way of doing things.
Employee
training
Across the
Group we provide continuous learning and development, training and awareness
opportunities to ensure that our employees.
In First Bus our
emphasis on competence, compliance and engagement is crucial for maintaining a
strong safety culture. We have introduced a bespoke health and safety training
programme, certified by the Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (IOSH)
ensuring key colleagues are well equipped to understand and adhere to safety
management protocols. This followed the introduction of a bespoke qualification
for our managers and supervisors which is accredited by the IOSH that is unique
and relevant to the road passenger transport sector and is designed to ensure
better applicability to road transport incidents as well as more interactive
learning through bite-size content.
In FirstRail a
dedication to employee health and safety is shared through induction, training,
communication, briefings, line management, peer review and sharing of best
practice. We maintain an internal openness and accountability in identifying
health and safety issues, which includes partnership working between employees
and trade unions to ensure a safe workplace. In addition to this, we work
closely with other rail industry partners to ensure we are aware of best
practice and lessons learned.
Raising
awareness
In First Bus approximately
a quarter of our customer and employee injuries happen each when they are
getting on or off our buses. Therefore, we strengthened our existing campaign
called ‘Hold, Look, Land’ to encourage safer behaviours to reduce slips, trips
and falls, sharing the message with customers through onboard signage and our
employees by embedding the message in local campaigns and messaging via the
winter guidance documents and employee app.
In First Rail
we continually focus on prioritising a reduction in customer injuries on our
trains. Our frontline staff are focused on identifying and assisting vulnerable
customers, the elderly or those with reduced mobility. To read more about how
we are improving accessibility, see the accessibility page on our website. We
regularly host publicity campaigns typically themed around known risks such as
not using handrails, minding gaps between trains and platforms, not using lifts
when travelling with luggage or pushchairs, not rushing and distraction due to
use of electronic devices.
Value
chain safety
In the same way
as we are focused on providing safer working conditions for our employees, we
are equally committed to providing safer environments in our supply chain and
contractors on our sites.
Over the years
we have strengthened value chain initiatives with requirements outlined in our
policies such as Supplier Code of Conduct, Health and Safety Policy and Group
Procurement Policy. Value chain considerations are also covered by our
management systems and governance process to ensure that all stakeholders can
work in a safe environment.