World Day for Safety and Health at work

The International Labour Organisation (ILO) hosts its annual World Day for Safety and health at work each year on or around 28th April.

This year the theme is ‘Anticipate, Respond and Prepare for Crisis’ recognises the challenges that all businesses have faced when coping with an unexpected, and ongoing pandemic.

Health and Safety at work is of the highest importance across the Boxes and Packaging group of companies of which we are part of, however, in the last year or so, it has come into scrutiny in a way that no one could have predicted, necessitating the introduction of new, and ever changing, legislation.

Now, alongside our practices, policies and procedures that we create and implement to protect our staff at work and safeguard them against the equipment they use, all our staff have had to adopt to a new way of working to mitigate the spread of Coronavirus and protect themselves and their colleagues each and every day that they are at work.

“Their ability to adapt and to continue working to the highest standards during what has evolved to be one of the busiest times the corrugated sector has ever seen, has been commendable,” said Group Health and Safety manager, Mark Ryan. “It has been a huge team effort and this culture within our business towards health and safety ensures all matters pertaining to health and safety are embraced by our staff to ensure our standards are maintained.”

During the last twelve months a number of other health and safety workplace initiatives have been implemented including mental health awareness training for all our supervisors and managers highlighting our commitment to recognising current challenges and adapting our training and education programmes to reflect this.

“2021 has also seen the roll out of our inaugural Wellbeing programme which is driving staff engagement in a quarterly focus event designed to promote the wider wellbeing of our staff, not just workplace health and safety,” said Mark. “January saw us support Brew Monday, and in March nineteen members of staff accepted our invite to take part in Walk All Over Cancer raising almost £16,000 between them.”

The ILO continues to promote Safety and health at work across all working environments to ensure that staff are trained, educated and protected both physically and mentally.

Further information can be found by visiting https://www.ilo.org/global/topics/safety-and-health-at-work/events-training/events-meetings/world-day-safety-health-at-work/lang–en/index.htm