Safety
Injury Prevention is one of our core values. We believe all injuries are preventable. We have a responsibility to our employees to work safely and conduct our operations in the safest way possible.
We continue to embed a culture of Injury Prevention across the Group. We want safe behaviour to become a way of life for our employees both at work and at home. Our ethos is simple: "If you cannot do it safely, don't do it."
All employees receive Injury prevention training and have a handbook to engage them actively in the process. Additional training is provided to directors, managers, supervisors and safety representatives to help them to lead on Injury Prevention. This is supported by ongoing programmes of briefings and specialist safety training for employees as required.
In addition to the handbook, the Injury Prevention database has been designed and rolled out to help log injury prevention data and track resulting actions to their completion. Over 300,000 contacts are recorded on the system every year.
For each Injury Prevention contact and tour entered an accurate record is taken. The responsibilities and actions are clearly mapped and each record captures exactly the resulting actions. The database can also assist with actions arising from meetings, audits, inspections, surveys and inquiries.
The Injury Prevention database is a valuable tool in helping make our working environment as safe as possible for our employees and customers.
Managing Safety
Safety is driven from the top of the organisation through the Executive Safety Committee chaired by the Chief Executive. Monthly reviews of safety performance trends inform the ongoing development of our safety programmes.
Our safety performance continues to improve. During the last 12 months our lost time injury rate reduced by 26% and our passenger injury rate fell by 15%.
Assaults on staff have also reduced. We operate zero tolerance to 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.
To ensure the safety of our passengers we train our drivers to the best possible standards. Across our bus operations in the UK and North America we develop our driver training programmes around the Smith System Defensive Driving programme, which focuses on safe driving techniques and anticipatory driving. We are currently also trialling driver feedback systems.
Train simulators are used to improve driver standards in all our train companies. Our Signals Passed at Danger (SPAD) rate has reduced this year by 37%. However, no SPAD is acceptable to us and we will continue to work to achieve zero SPADs.
This year our safety achievements have been recognised on both sides of the Atlantic.
- In North America the National Safety Council awarded us the Green Cross for Safety Medal. Each year the medal is presented to an organisation that demonstrates a steadfast commitment to improving safety and health in the workplace and community and to safety leadership as demonstrated by its Chief Executive.
- FirstGroup was also recognised at this year's Excellence in Road Safety Awards, which were presented by the European Commission as part of the Road Safety Charter. The judges highlighted both our approach to Injury Prevention and our use of Smith System training for drivers.