A strong occupational safety and health culture is valued and promoted within Russell and so we are proud to acknowledge World Day for Health and Safety at Work.
The Day is held annually on the 28th April and promotes and brings awareness to the necessity of creating a positive safety and health culture at work to reduce the number of work related deaths and injuries.
As an employer we are responsible for ensuring our employees have a safe and healthy working environment. As a result, we continuously collaborate with our team to find appropriate, effective, and sustainable solutions to health and safety issues through open communication and dialogue. We accomplish this by encouraging our workers to report health and safety hazards and make health and safety suggestions through our Safety, Health, and Environmental Portal (SHE Portal).
Our SHE Portal provides our workers with a voice to report any accidents, incidents and near miss events directly to Site Management, the Safety Team, Business Unit Heads and the CEO.
Acting quickly to accidents, incidents and near miss events creates a positive Health and Safety culture within the Group and so we have QR codes to quickly access the SHE Portal darted across our sites.
As our workers are responsible for working safely, protecting themselves and not endangering others, it is essential that they know what hazard and accident prevention measures they can implement when working. To ensure that our team have the necessary knowledge to work safely, they participate in health and safety training and are subject to following Russell’s Health and Safety Culture Initiative: Think Safe. Act Safe. Home Safe. Through this initiative we encourage workers to think about potential hazard/safety risks and act according to relevant health and safety procedures to ensure they get home safe.
We strive to ensure that all of our team have a uniformed mindset when it comes to safety so that working safely becomes second nature and there is a drop in accidents/incidents. Our Head of Health and Safety, Craig Welsh, stressed the importance of a positive health and safety mindset in assessing risk and preventing accidents, and the importance of considering how our employees actions not only affect them but also the people who love and depend on them:
“When we think about risk, we tend only to think of ourselves. “I’ll be fine…I won’t get hurt…I can go a bit faster…I’ve never been involved in an accident…it won’t happen to me”. We often don’t consider the people who depend on us, the people closest to us. The people who rely on our love, support, advice, to make them laugh, to pick them up when they are sad and for us to provide a safe home. The people who depend on us to make the right decisions whilst at work so that we are not harmed. Family, loved ones, friends, the important people in our lives. Health and Safety risk is prevalent in every aspect of our working lives. A shortcut to finish a task, failure to secure a load properly, skipping a step in a procedure to save time and effort, using our mobile phones, or switching to a new playlist when driving, not bothering to carry out safety checks on vehicles or equipment. We are asking our employees not to risk their safety under any circumstance and to always think about the people who depend on them.”
If you have any health and safety questions or concerns or are a member of staff and would like further training, please contact your line manager or the Health and Safety Department.