Health and safety in the workplace

Improving our safety performance is one of our top management priorities across the business. We have developed additional programmes to improve our safety performance and are reviewing and monitoring our performance more closely than ever before.

Our goal is to embed a zero accident culture. In 2004, we updated our Environment Health and Safety Standards and our EHS Policy and their accompanying management processes and systems. Technical training is provided to embed these standards.

In 2005, we developed a Driver Safety programme to reduce the number of road transport accidents. We also created an EHS leadership training course to ensure that our senior managers understand their accountabilities and responsibilities in this area. This latter course was delivered to over 200 employees across all areas of manufacturing and supply chain. Our EHS leadership training is based on an international version of the highly acclaimed EHS course ("Directing Safely") for senior managers accredited by the Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (IOSH).

Research has shown that cultural and behavioural change programmes supported by training are a key element in making significant and long lasting change in attitudes to safety at work. We also plan to pilot a Behavioural Based Safety programme at a number of our sites.

We deeply regret that in 2005, seven people were fatally injured while working for us in our various businesses across the world. Of these, six were sales related - involving traffic accidents while travelling for work - and one was at a manufacturing site. This is entirely unacceptable and must change. It is therefore the highest priority for both management and colleague action.

Fatal Accidents

	2002	2003	2004	2005
Employee ON site	1	2	1	1
Employee OFF site	4	1	4	6
Contractors	0	2	0	0
Total Fatalities	5	5	5	7

Note: ‘ON’ site refers to our manufacturing site. 'OFF' site refers to work outside our manufacturing site, such as work travel.

LTIFR (Lost Time Injury Frequency Rate per 200,000 hours)

* To make future comparisons more meaningful, we have recalculated 2005 data to exclude Europe Beverages, which we sold in early 2006.

Measuring and monitoring our performance

We use the accepted international standard, LTIFR (Lost Time Injury Frequency Rate) to monitor and track our workplace health and safety. This is a standard industry method of measuring injuries, sometimes referred to as Lost Workday Case Rate. Our present performance against this method of monitoring is disappointing. Although we showed modest improvement in 2005, we recognise that we still have a long way to go and are working hard to improve this. LTIFR is one of our Key Performance Indicators and we aim to reduce our LTIFR to 0.5 by 2010.

Behavioural based safety at Bertrand Manufacturing, Toronto, Canada

Despite significant focus on safety in previous years, our confectionery manufacturing plant at Bertrand wished to move safety performance to a higher level.

After comparing a variety of options, the plant decided to adopt the Behavioural Based Safety (BBS) programme and to integrate it into its existing safety programmes. The programme, with its emphasis on individual safety performance, involved:

Everyone taking real responsibility for their own safety and that of those around them
Each colleague observing, measuring and improving their own safety behaviour
Changing colleagues’ thinking to create a culture where 'I' try to prevent accidents

The success of the programme depended on the wholehearted ownership and commitment of everyone on site. It involved a fundamental shift in how the plant operated and how people behaved - with colleagues observing each other's behaviour, and then using these observations to drive change and prevent injury across the site.

In 2005, the plant achieved zero lost time accidents and has now operated for over two years without a time losing injury.