The safety and wellbeing of our people is paramount
The safety, health and wellbeing of our employees is an enduring priority. Our strong safety culture has many different facets, and a dominant one is the commitment of our leadership to keeping our people safe. We strive continually to improve the safety of our people.
Our approach to safety
We operate a number of industrial sites and our manufacturing activities present a range of risks. These include work in confined spaces, machinery operation, working at height, and slips, trips and falls among others. Our 2022 safety performance showed a small improvement in recordable and major injuries from 2021. We monitor and aim to eliminate, mitigate and manage workplace safety risks. Our approach to identifying and assessing safety risks is embedded within our approach to risk management.
Employee health and wellbeing
The importance of our employees’ health and wellbeing rose to the fore during the COVID-19 pandemic and remains a priority. We anticipate that it will continue to be important through 2023, as the cost of living crisis and its potential wide range of impacts continue. Our wellbeing programmes support employees in both their work and personal responsibilities.
Our response to Covid-19
Throughout the pandemic, our priority has been, and continues to be, the health and wellbeing of our employees. We introduced a number of measures to return employees safely back to work where their role could not be carried out from home. Measures included: return to work inductions outlining new working practices; additional hygiene measures and temperature checks; increased provision of PPE; introduction of physical distancing practices where possible which included reconfiguring our workplaces and practices such as elongated shift patterns to maintain output and staggered shift changes to improve personnel flows; capping the number of workers on site at any given time; and zoning systems to keep groups of workers together in bubbles. Through these and other measures, we reduced the risks of Covid-19 spread and preserved our ability to deliver a number of critical milestones for our customers.
We bolstered our IT network capacity and provided additional hardware and software so that employees who could carry out their roles at home could do so. To assist home-working, we developed guides to support employees in maintaining their safety, security, wellbeing and productivity whilst working effectively from home.
Supporting our employees' mental health
For us, being open and providing support for the mental health of our employees is a vital element in ensuring BAE Systems has an inclusive work culture.
Reducing stress and building resilience
Our free mental health and wellbeing webinars and personal development opportunities have helped employees take time for themselves, learn new skills and enhance resilience.
