Health and safety is our number one operational priority. A strong safety culture is important to our clients and is critical to protect the wellbeing of our colleagues and consumers. Reducing the number of incidents we have results in effective cost management through improved incident and absentee rates, with reduced cost to the business.
All management and board meetings throughout the Group feature a health and safety update as one of their top agenda items. The Corporate Responsibility Committee reviews the HSE policies annually to ensure that they continue to reflect our aims and aspirations, and meet with current legislation.
Supporting the Board is our global HSE Forum, made up of technical specialists from around the Compass globe. The Forum is responsible for defining policies, setting standards, measuring compliance and sharing best practice across the Group.
We believe that everyone at Compass has a moral obligation to safeguard each other, our customers and the environment by operating a safe, injury-free and healthy workplace, serving food that is always safe to eat, nutritional and which minimises our impact on the environment. To ensure best practice, we developed a set of policies, minimum operating standards and behaviours in 2007, which have been steadily rolled out across our business. We are pleased to report that this year the first phase of the programme has been successfully implemented across 99% (2010: 98%) of our countries. Our standards are based on the strictest regulatory requirements and industry best practice. World-class performance continues to be our aim, seeking over the short- to medium-term to set the benchmark for our industry.
This year, in line with our published 2010-2011 commitment, we have worked hard with our internal stakeholders to measure, collate and report on our Lost Time Injury Rate (‘LTIR’) in a consistent way. All of our countries now report their health and safety and food safety performance in a consistent format every month. Due to the diverse range of business sectors in which we operate, we have further work to do in consolidating our performance data to create one global measurement which we can report publicly.
Environment
A key driver towards our success is the degree of autonomy which is afforded to local management teams, allowing them to serve local markets in the most appropriate manner. To support their activities, we have developed an environmental policy supported by a minimum operating standard and a set of behaviours that are being introduced into all our operations.
Improving data accuracy
In 2011 we continue to improve upon our web-based reporting tool to consistently track and report globally on our greenhouse gas emissions in our ‘Top Ten’ countries which account for over 83% of total Group revenue. We are pleased that our ability to report our environmental performance accurately, including the quality of data, continues to improve and as a result, this year we increased the scope of our reporting countries from our ‘Top Ten’ to our ‘Top Twenty’ countries which account for 93% of total Group revenue.
Although we have made good progress in collating data relating to our own business operations, we have more work to do in terms of improving the quality of data provided by our suppliers. To help us build a greater awareness of their activities, we have refreshed our supplier assurance programme to include additional focus on environmental practices within our global supply chain. Launched in 2011, this is progressively being phased in across our business.
In the majority of our locations where we are not directly responsible for the procurement of utilities, equipment, fuel etc, we are working closely with our clients to consider how best to improve the environmental performance of our operations.
Policy
Our aim is to set industry-leading standards that set the benchmark on performance regarding occupational health and safety, food safety and the environment, providing our customers with the assurance that we are constantly striving to achieve the highest possible standards.
View our global policies