Member Article

National health and safety award for waste company

A waste management company has achieved its first-ever national health and safety award in recognition of the work it has done in helping its staff, customers and contractors get safely home at the end of the working day.

Yorwaste has been awarded a bronze award from the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents.

This is in recognition of its excellent health and safety performance during 2017.

The award recognises the health and safety management systems that have been put into place to look after the health and wellbeing of staff, customers and anyone else who encounters the organisation.

Health and safety is one of Yorwaste’s five core values, and to ensure this is fully embedded into its culture, it launched the Yorsafety initiative. This introduced a series of measures designed to set standards, raise awareness of the importance of health and safety within the organisation and encourage employees to take ownership of their safety, as well as that of their colleagues.

These measures included launching a safety observations initiative and introducing a safety reward scheme, carrying out safety awareness training and publicising the initiative through posters and signs.

Yorwaste’s Head of Risk Management, Peter Frankish, said: “Historically, the waste industry had had a very poor health and safety record, to achieve recognition of the work we have done to protect our staff, and anyone else who comes to our sites, is fantastic.

“Safety performance is at an all-time high and staff are very proactive when it comes to health and safety, looking at things with a preventative attitude at all times.

“In 2017, when we benchmarked our health and safety culture against other waste companies in the UK, we were well above average in four target indicators and achieved the highest score in the industry in the other four indicators.

“We won’t, of course, be resting on our laurels and our aim now is to achieve a RoSPA silver award.”

Julia Small, RoSPA’s Head of Qualifications, Awards and Events, said: “The RoSPA Awards are the most highly-respected in the health and safety arena, with almost 2,000 entrants every year, and allow organisations to prove excellence in the workplace, demonstrating a commitment to the wellbeing of not only employees but all those who interact with it.”

The RoSPA awards are the longest-running industry awards scheme in the UK.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Neil Shaefer .