Dairy Crest was named a runner-up in the National Food and Drink Health and Safety Awards, at an Institution of Occupational Safety and Health (IOSH) event, in Harrogate (UK).
Its health and safety team picked up the accolade for a project which has helped staff safety on delivery rounds, reducing accidents off-site from 103, to 69, and saving the company around half a million pounds in the process.
It used behavioural safety to counteract some of the accidents staff were experiencing while on deliveries, including slips and trips, lacerations from falling onto glass and manual handling injuries.
The company introduced a network of ‘Behavioural Safety Champions’, to get the health and safety message across its 110 depots, reaching 3,000 staff. Through them, employees learned to spot hazards and report them, making their working environment safer.
Dairy Crest’s 3,000 milkmen and women make deliveries six days a week, 52 weeks of the year. As part of the Behavioural Safety Champions project, appointed staff held presentations with their depots and encouraged staff to tell them about near misses and hazards they’d spotted.
Using posters, leaflets and reporting cards, the message filtered through to employees and made a difference. Among the other initiatives introduced, ‘Health and safety surgery’ days have been put in place at each depot, where people can table their concerns.
From the top two causes of lost-time accidents at the company, slips trips and falls have dropped by 17%, from 75 to 62, while manual handling injuries are now at 13, compared with 36 in 2010/2011.
Source: IOSH
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