Marshalls West Lane
Manufacturing Sector Highly Commended Award
Involving the workforce in the management of health and safety is an approach that has been wholeheartedly adopted at Marshalls West Lane Works Landscape Division.
The Halifax-based site was highly commended in the Manufacturing Sector at this year’s RoSPA Occupational Health and Safety Awards.
With on-site hazards including 38 five and eight-tonne fork-lift trucks, heavy paving stones and silos measuring 30-60ft in height, health and safety is taken extremely seriously at the site that manufactures hard landscaping for the commercial and domestic market.
Direction comes from the top, with health and safety performance measured and given the same priority as other key areas of business, and all managers work towards health and safety qualifications.
Workforce initiatives are also in place.
A Positive Safety Programme, based on “Behaviour Kinetics”, is in operation, through which potential risks and unsafe practices can be reported anonymously, and the site also has a four-stage training scheme that takes employees from their initial induction, after which they are allowed on the shop floor, right up to the taking of external qualifications.
A new Occupational Excellence Programme enables employees who usually work a 48-hour week to reduce their hours to 40 if they work safely and productively.
A key cultural change over the last two years has been workers assuming greater responsibility for their own supervision, which has allowed some people employed in traditional supervisory roles to be moved into expanded and dedicated health and safety and practice development teams.
Mick Connor, National Manufacturing Operations Manager, said: “We have a working environment where people actually enjoy coming to work. We try to create an environment where people feel safe and valued. We have 230 people running the business - not one person.”
Notable achievements include a reduction in absence and fewer insurance claims, leading to lower premiums.
The result is that West Lane Works is now viewed as a leader in the management of health and safety, sharing good practice with other companies and receiving many requests for site visits from people keen to find out more about its approach.
Indeed, this approach has also been endorsed by the workforce - all 230 of the site’s employees signed the RoSPA Awards entry form.
Robert Crosby, Systems Development and Training Co-ordinator, said: “If you go around and ask an employee who is responsible for quality, they will say ‘me’, and for health and safety, they will also say ‘me’.”
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