Did you know that around 2.3 million women and men around the world succumb to work-related accidents or diseases each year?

Did you know that, across all organizations worldwide, there are around 340 million occupational accidents every year?

We believe that accidents are preventable so have committed to embracing a culture of safety to ensure injuries and ill health are avoided.

One of the ways we do this is through training all employees on our ‘3 checks for safety’, which must be completed before starting any task:

1. Do I know how to do the job?
2. Do I have the right equipment?
3. Is my environment safe?

As well as following stringent safety procedures, we encourage employees to embrace their entrepreneurial spirit and introduce additional measures to improve safety.

Each year we celebrate the teams and individuals going the extra mile to ensure safety at their workplace through our ‘Have a Safe Day Awards’.

Here are some of the ideas which finalists from across Sodexo introduced last year to enhance the ‘Do I know how to do the job?’ safety check:

Strengthening food hygiene routines in Sweden

At the central production unit in Gävle, Sweden, Susanna Stromberg, food safety specialist, and Andreas Samuelsson, central production unit team leader, have implemented new digital documentation which have strengthened the existing food safety routines and minimize risks throughout production from contamination risks to allergy incidents.

Susanna and Andreas worked to create a complete safety culture across the whole team, leading by example and helping employees understand why new documentation had been introduced, providing support where needed. Everyone in the team takes responsibility for their own part and for the safety of the whole team.

Induction training in Colombia

The Logistics team at the multinational Corona in Colombia decided to create short videos about key processes and standards required at the location so that new hires would be able to access this information in a more digestible format.

These short step-by-step videos can be viewed on a mobile device and new team members can watch them as many times as needed. Each new team member is then evaluated on their complete understanding of the processes before they are able to complete a task unsupervised.

This local training is in addition to the standard company corporate induction and has helped new hires become familiar with processes and standards much more quickly, potentially avoiding errors, omissions or accidents.

Engaging the whole team in a safety mindset in the UK & Ireland

The team at one of our large client contracts in the UK & Ireland have created two videos to engage the whole team in safety behaviours. The videos demonstrate the journey through an office site and through a production site, with various hazards and near misses set up in a controlled way. Employees are asked to watch the videos and write down as many hazards as they can spot.

The ultimate goal is to increase awareness of the hazards which can occur within a normal working day, increase near miss reporting numbers and reduce accidents.

Since the videos were launched, the team have noticed the following positive trends when comparing safety statistic to the previous year:

• 75% reduction in incidents
• 75% reduction in lost time incidents (LTIs)
• 75% increase in near misses reported

These are just some of the ways our teams around the world are going above and beyond to help each employee, client and consumer stay safe.

Look out for the next two articles in the ‘3 checks for safety’ series coming later this year.

Find out more about our… Safety Culture

Ensuring health and safety with 3 key safety checks: job knowledge