‘Positive health & safety outcomes’

The Group has continued to focus its energies on Health and Safety. This year, both the Health and Safety Strategy and our Key Result Areas (KRAs) have been reviewed and refined to ensure that we focus on the activities that lead to positive health and safety outcomes for the Group.

We have made solid progress against our goals. We remain committed to providing a safe environment for our team, customers, contractors and visitors. Strong, visible leadership is key to achieving our goals.

The first half of the year was focused on embedding initiatives and changes across the Group. A key focus area was incident reporting, especially near-miss incident reporting. This reporting focus saw associated rises in our injury rates and increases in near-miss reporting which enables us to identify and respond to the root causes of injuries. The Health and Safety team also focused on working with the business and the Board to understand and plan for the new Health and Safety legislation and its potential impact on the Group.

The second half of the year focused on bringing Health and Safety into the business decision-making processes earlier to ensure that safety is factored into initiatives. This has resulted in a number of successful outcomes that balance the needs of the business with keeping people safe.

The Warehouse’s Westgate store has been used as a Health and Safety innovation store where new initiatives are trialled by team members who provide feedback on their impact.

We are pleased that the second year of our Health and Safety Culture survey shows an increase in our performance score over the year as well as significant increases in some of the key questions concerning health and safety activities. Our improved performance is particularly pleasing as our survey partner reports that most companies experience a decline in performance in year two. We retained our ACC Partnership Programme Tertiary status following an audit that was conducted in our Dunedin and Invercargill stores.

The Business and the Health and Safety team are pleased with the progress that has been made throughout the year. While we are disappointed that we have not seen the reduction in incidents, we are confident that we are on the right track, as the Culture Survey indicates, and we expect to see a decrease in incidents during FY17.

OUR 5 STRATEGIC KEY RESULTS AREAS

LEADERSHIP

Ensure leaders know how to lead to keep our people safe and well

WELLNESS

Create an environment where workplace wellness takes priority

INTEGRATION AND SIMPLIFICATION

H&S systems and processes using data for targeted injury and wellness initiatives

RISK AND COMPLIANCE

Managing our risks and compliance obligations

PARTNER WITH BUSINESSES AND CUSTOMERS

Partner with like-minded businesses and our customers to drive step change in understanding of safety practices in New Zealand