Health and safety

We continue to promote a health and safety culture throughout our Group.  

We have a duty to employees, customers and others involved in our businesses (for example contractors and suppliers) to make sure our retail stores, distribution centres and offices are safe places to work.  We view standards of health and safety required by law as only a minimum.  

This year a dedicated health and safety committee was established to manage this agenda.  More detailed reporting of accidents has been introduced across the Group to prove greater insight as to the root cause of accidents and better determine what more can be done to prevent similar occurrences in the future.

In 2010/11 there were two employee fatalities, both traffic accidents when delivering pharmaceuticals, one in Turkey and one in Egypt.  In addition, there were 666 employee work related “over three-day” lost time accidents/injuries, a year on year decrease of 16.  The vast majority of these were fractures resulting from trips or falls.  

We continuously seek to minimise the number of workplace incidents by:

• Having operational safety policies for each business and ensuring their effective implementation through local business teams;
• Ensuring health and safety is given the same importance as all other business matters and that it is not cash constrained;
• Seeking best practice throughout our businesses by, amongst other things, identifying workplace hazards, prioritising risks, and in ensuring we have appropriate control measures in place to minimise those risks;
• Fostering a culture where health and safety is always on the agenda;
• Continuously reviewing risk assessments and accident statistics for businesses across the Group to sustain a culture of prevention; and
• Ensuring that health and safety training is provided for employees so that they can fulfil the health and safety responsibilities and duties allocated to them.  We believe that excellent health and safety standards contribute to the development of our employees, our key resource, and lead to excellent business performance.

Health and safety initiatives

Health and safety information relating to accidents, pharmacy dispensing errors and environmental incidents is collected on a monthly basis across our businesses using standardised criteria and definitions.  This information is reported to the Board each month and reviewed at every Board meeting.  

Accidents for the year ended 31 March 2011 disclosed below, includes data from acquisitions, from the date of becoming a subsidiary.

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