Occupational Health & Safety

Injury Prevention is our commitment to safety led by the Chief Executive who chairs the Executive Safety Committee.

Performance summary

We continue to improve our safety performance. However this progress has been marred by the tragic loss of two employees due to traffic accidents and one employee due to a drowning in our First Services division. These incidents reaffirm the need to continue towards our goal of zero injuries.

Assaults on staff have increased by 4%. We have a zero tolerance policy towards assaults in the workplace and will continue to do everything we can to prevent them. Customer-facing staff are offered conflict avoidance training and we work closely with police to improve the prosecution rate of offenders.

Full details of our occupational safety performance trends can be found here. Details on customer related performance trends can be found here.

Training

Training is core to our safety provision. All our bus drivers are trained to the highest safety standards using the Smith System Defensive Driving programme and supporting techniques. The programme promotes defensive driving to reduce risks to passengers and third parties. We encourage employees to have safety conversations and regular briefings help promote a positive safety culture within the workplace. Route risk assessments are used to raise awareness of route-specific issues and information on incidents, accidents and lessons learnt are shared widely across the Group.

Health and wellbeing

We continue to work on the development of our health and wellbeing provision in response to employee feedback and have introduced a new health and wellbeing policy to reflect the growing importance of this issue. Employee Assistance Programmes (EAPs) are either in place or being established across the Group. EAPs give employees access to health, financial and legal advice free of charge, with additional access to an online portal giving useful information and guidance on all life issues. Access to face-to-face counselling services is also included.

A recent employee needs assessment identified work-life balance and personal health and stress as major issues. We are collaborating with our EAP providers and occupational health teams to manage these. We are also becoming involved in a number of health-related campaigns via Change for Life and our EAP providers in North America, encouraging employees to lead healthier lifestyles and recognise signs of illness.

The absence/sickness rate in our UK Rail division has fallen by 7.5% to 3.5%. UK Bus continue to maintain driver absence at the relatively low level of 3.3%.

Full absence and sickness data can be found here.