Valuing our people

Employee health and safety

Our performance

We have a Health, Safety and Environment (HSE) Management System to promote the wellbeing of all our employees, contractors, tenants and patrons.

We have improved our management system during FY09 and this will continue to be a priority for us in the year ahead. We consider that our HSE Management System is defined by our collective attitudes and leadership behaviours. Our HSE team helps guide our line managers and support them with specialist knowledge.

We aim to drive change by first focusing on our competency and behaviours and then supporting the changes with our management system. There are challenges in this approach and it requires time and effort, however we believe the benefits can be seen in our injury performance, by the feedback provided in the Our Voice employee survey and by feedback we have received from contractors during the year.

During the reporting period we experienced no serious employee injuries and our employee lost time injury frequency rate of 2.6 was lower than our target of 4.0 or less. In the UK we experienced one incident with an employee that required notification to the Health and Safety Executive. The incident was mild and the Health and Safety Executive did not investigate.

We experienced no serious environmental breaches and continued to carefully manage contamination issues at several of our properties. There were two instances of fire at our UK properties in the reporting period. One was a case of arson and was investigated by the police, with no fault on our part. The other was a tenant issue due to equipment being left on overnight. Again, there was no fault on our part, and remedial action was taken by the tenant to ensure there will be no further occurrences.

Engaging our employees in our HSE program

Recognising that world-class HSE requires the active and sustained participation of all employees, we require all employees to include HSE objectives in their performance plans and we make sure these objectives require personal involvement in HSE activities such as risk assessments and incident investigation.

We support employee involvement by providing induction and training programs, specialist support from the HSE team, and internal communications on HSE through our internal newsletter and intranet.

Many employees were involved in an extensive program of initiatives during Safe Work Week in October 2008 and for the first time we implemented a trial of the Global Corporate Challenge walking program, a health and wellbeing event that aims to address the risks of sedentary occupations and longer work days.

The success of our employee engagement initiatives is demonstrated by responses in 'Our Voice' survey, where 95 per cent of employees reported they have a good understanding of their HSE responsibilities and 89 per cent of employees (up from 84 per cent in 2008) think that effective action is taken when unsafe conditions are brought to management's attention. In the UK, our employee survey showed a distinct increase in the understanding of individual HSE responsibilities. The HSE category score improved by 12 points from 2008 to 78 per cent. We commenced a training program for an HSE representative for our three offices in London, Edinburgh and Glasgow. We also conducted in-depth HSE training with our centre and building managers in April.

We plan to continue our engagement strategy in FY10 and include a more comprehensive health and wellbeing program.

Working with our contractors and business partners

We continued improving our contracts during FY09 by providing clear expectations for HSE best practice and improving our contractor induction program. We maintained our focus on timely and accurate reporting and worked with contractors to help them investigate HSE incidents to identify changes to prevent recurrence. Two people working for construction contractors at different development sites sustained serious injuries needing long-term rehabilitation within the reporting period. In both instances, the sites were under control of principal contractors. Both incidents involved a fall from height, one from a roof during demolition works and the other from a formwork platform.

We have continued to circulate safety alerts to our contractors and consultants. Most importantly, we have continued to improve the frequency and quality of interaction around HSE that our front line managers have with contractors and other business partners during their regular business interactions such as tender meetings, pre-start briefings, co-ordination meetings and site visits.

In the UK, two of our contractors experienced serious reportable incidents during the year, one involving a scaffolding pole and the other a partial block wall collapse. Neither were reportable under the Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations 1995 (RIDDOR) and no action was taken against us.

Launch of new online incident reporting system

We launched an incident reporting and investigation system (IRIS) in January 2009 that will help us improve our reporting and analysis and identify and eliminate conditions that cause incidents. We will develop a new IRIS module in FY10 for scheduling and recording audits and results from the audits. We will also be able to record HSE issues such as contamination that require ongoing management. The module will have the facility to record HSE hazards and actions taken to eliminate or control hazards.

In the UK, we relaunched an online system in early 2009 called the Risk Action Plan Database (RAP). RAP holds all information from external Health and Safety/Fire/Disability Discrimination Act Access audits and insurance inspections and is our primary risk management tool. The system allows us to monitor and report our risks across the portfolio. In recent months, as a consequence of the HSE training and relaunch of the system, we have seen a significant reduction in the number of risks being addressed and closed off.