Our workplace target highlights

Highlights of progress against the targets we set and published during 2010/11 are as follows:

Target: To reinforce our approach to health and safety across the Group and decrease the number of incidents.

Achievements: 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 traffi c 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. More detailed information will be contained in the CSR report that will be published in September.

Target: To deliver workplace health programmes that are aligned to the businesses and local needs making a positive contribution to the health and wellbeing of our people.

Achievements: Each business is required to deliver a range of specifi c health related initiatives that are appropriate to their location and type of business. This year our Pharmaceutical Wholesale Division established a number of health programmes. For example, Alliance Healthcare in the Czech Republic developed a new maternity handbook to offer advice and information to staff.

Within our Health & Beauty Division, Boots Opticians provided free eye examinations to all employees and Boots Ireland put in place a new e-learning based health and safety training programme for employees. In the UK, Boots introduced a “Healthy Minds” intranet site in April 2010 and a complementary e-learning package which was completed during the year by around 5,000 colleagues. More recently, in February 2011, Boots UK launched a ‘Healthy Backs’ intranet site.

Target: To introduce local forms of employee feedback to all major parts of the Group.

Achievements: Employee surveys have now been introduced across Alliance Boots, other than in businesses acquired during the year. Each business’ results have been reviewed by their human resources functions and senior management teams to determine key learnings and resulting actions. In addition, this information is now being shared across the human resources community so that best practice can be shared.