Safety
Safety is our number one priority.We are committed to preventing injury or harm to our employees, our customers and others affected by our activities. Our goal is to eliminate all injuries to our staff or customers and all vehicle collisions.
Managing Safety
Our safety programme is led by the Executive Safety Committee, which is chaired by the Chief Executive. The Group Safety Director leads its implementation, supported by the Heads of Safety for each division (or operating company in the case of North America). A well-established safety management structure cascades down to site level.
We have well-established safety data reporting systems which we analyse continually to identify adverse trends and root causes. This informs our safety strategy which we continue to develop in order to maintain performance improvements.
The Injury Prevention Programme (IPP)
The Injury Prevention Programme (IPP) was created in February 2006. Since then it has been further developed and rolled out across the Group. It provides the framework for our overall safety strategy and during the past 12 months we have been working to embed its principles and philosophy, driving towards a change in safety culture across the Group. The IPP aims to prevent injuries and the incidents that could lead to injuries or collisions. It encourages employees to take responsibility for safety and promotes improved communication between employees and their managers. The IPP is supported by the First Safety Principles of safe working practices underpinned by the motto 'If you cannot do it safely, don't do it!'
Our employees have now received an IPP briefing setting out the principles of the IPP and the role of employees in preventing injuries to themselves and others. Additional training has been provided to directors, managers, supervisors and safety representatives. Following these briefings all employees now have an IPP handbook which is used to record safety conversations, thus encouraging more proactive communication on safety issues.
In addition, recurrent review and development of our driver training programmes aim to reduce passenger injury and vehicle collision rates. We will introduce the Smith System Defensive Driving programme to our UK Bus division in the coming year. This programme has proved highly effective in North America where the training continues to improve and evolve.
The significant improvements in our safety performance suggest that the IPP is already helping to reduce injury rates.
| Our Group Safety Performance Trends 2006/07 | |
|---|---|
| Performance Trend April 2006-March 2007 compared to the previous 12 month period | |
| Lost time injuries (over one day) per 1,000 employees per year | -31% |
| All injuries per 1,000 employees per year | -22% |
| Passenger injuries per million miles | -16% |
| Vehicle collisions per million miles | -12% |
Further examples of the actions we have taken to improve our safety performance and data trends can be found by following the links below.