We’ve always attached great importance to effective management of health and safety. Our reputation – and therefore our business success – depends on it.

As we’ve grown in scale and diversity, the range of risks that need to be effectively managed has substantially increased. And as we’ve become a more visible provider of front-line public services, the importance of maintaining our reputation for safety has become even greater. So we’ve developed increasingly rigorous systems and processes to control risks and embed in all our staff an effective health and safety culture.

Our vision is to be trusted by staff, customers and stakeholders as a safe organisation with a record for health, safety and staff welfare that exceeds market benchmarks. So our mission is to sustain an environment that protects their health, safety and welfare by ensuring that:

• Everyone understands the issues and takes pride in consistently behaving in a safe manner
• We create a healthy, productive and inclusive workforce through effective management of staff welfare and occupational health
• The risks associated with all our activities are properly identified, understood and controlled
• We constantly identify and address new challenges to health and safety in the workplace
• We are open and honest in the way we communicate our health and safety performance, achieving recognition and respect for it as an integral part of our values and a competitive differentiator in the markets where we operate.
• Serco focuses on creating a culture dedicated to eliminating accidents at work and absence due to work-related ill health.  We work rigorously to ensure legal compliance in all areas where we have responsibility.  We have systems and processes to control risk and to ensure we meet Serco’s policy standards on health and safety.     

The directors of Serco Group plc are ultimately responsible throughout the company for policy and ensuring its effective implementation.  The Chief Executive champions this on the board.  A full-time Director Health and Safety (Company Safety Advisor), a member of the Corporate Assurance Group, is responsible for the development of policy and company standards, ensuring legal compliance and continual improvement.  In addition to the quarterly meetings of our Assurance Network attended by representatives from all divisions, safety oversight groups address specific issues, such as aviation and rail safety.

Our commitment to health and safety is reflected in our policy statement and Serco’s Management System.  Specifically we expect all business operations to ensure that:

• health and safety management systems including, where appropriate, specific individual policy statements and workplace procedures safeguard the health and safety of our employees, business partners and the general public
• health and safety risks have been identified, are periodically reviewed and assessed, with prioritised action plans and work instructions in place for risk and impact elimination and reduction
• incidents are reported, causes identified, actions implemented to prevent the incident happening again and clearly documented
• health surveillance programmes monitor and record employees where the health risk assessment has identified a need and to comply with legal or regulatory requirements
• occupational health programmes are in place to support the well-being of employees and measure and report on health in the workplace
• where the workplace, work activities or work planning are shared with any other employer, occupier or relevant person, there is demonstrable evidence of cooperation and coordination of health and safety and environmental management.     

The Corporate Assurance Group provides independent internal audit of the divisions.  No material deficiencies were recognised and where improvements were identified action plans were agreed with the relevant division.  As a result of this the Corporate Assurance Group were able to assure the Serco Group plc Board that appropriate management systems, processes and procedures were in place to manage health and safety issues and that each division continues to give these matters appropriate commitment and management attention.

In recognition of the risks we are required to manage and to ensure a robust efficient health and safety culture, we have developed increasingly rigorous systems and process.

ASSURE™ is our innovative assurance reporting system, developed in-house by Serco Assurance.  This web based application enables our contracts around the world to record and monitor planned and unplanned events easily, helping us see where and how risks arise.  Using this information we can prevent such incidents recurring, and reduce the risk of a major accident.

At a local contract level we run a range of initiatives to increase awareness.  These case studies are provided in our 2006 Corporate Responsibility report.