World Day for Safety and Health at Work – Committed to Delivering Continuous Health, Safety and Wellbeing Excellence

World Day for Safety and Health at Work is marked annually across the globe on the 28^th of April. The day is dedicated to promoting the importance of health and safety in the workplace and raising awareness of the risks and hazards that employees face on a daily basis.

Health and safety plays a pivotal role in the built environment industry, and we recognise our responsibility as an employer to provide a safe working environment for all of our employees. At Bouygues E&S, we are strongly committed to ensuring the safety and wellbeing of our employees and embedding health and safety as part of our culture.

In recognition of this important awareness day, we’re drawing attention to the risk of slips, trips, and falls. Often underestimated, these types of accidents are actually the most common cause of injuries at work and can have serious consequences. In fact, they’re responsible for over a third of all reported major injuries, 20% of injuries to employees that lasted more than 3 days, and 2 fatalities a year. For the NHS, the cost is estimated to be around £133 million a year in time and resources.

We take the risk to our employees seriously and aim to continue to achieve the highest standard in health and safety compliance. As part of this ongoing effort, we recently launched a campaign dedicated to raising awareness of the dangers of slips, trips, and falls. This included dedicated toolbox talks delivered to our sites alongside a video presentation available in six languages addressing the potential consequences of a fall and promoting methods to minimise the risk of accidents.

We also encourage our employees to report any accidents, injuries, near-misses, and even hazards through our incident reporting helpline. Through encouraging incident reporting, we’re able to document risks more accurately and identify opportunities to prevent similar incidents re-occurring in the future.  As a result of this campaign, hazards for slips, trips, and falls became the most reported risk on our helpline, demonstrating that issues are pre-emptively recognised and addressed.

These efforts work in conjunction with our internal TopSite CSR accreditation, a certificate designed to recognise best-in class construction sites. The comprehensive award aims to ensure and display the optimal standard of operational performance. With a thorough evaluation of health and safety practices on site, this certificate ensures our sites meet the highest level of safety. 

 

Stephen Ford, Health & Safety Director at Bouygues E&S, shared: “Our commitment to health, safety, and wellbeing remains fundamental to protecting our people and those working on our behalf. By promoting, raising awareness, and taking action to mitigate the risks of slips, trips and falls in the workplace, we can ensure that each and every one of our employees goes home safely at the end of each day.”

Read how our unwavering commitment to the health, safety, and wellbeing of our people has been recognised for the eleventh consecutive time with our recent RoSPA GOLD and RoSPA President’s Award here.