Health & Safety: keeping our customers, team members, contractors, and visitors safe
The safety of everyone who comes through our doors is our number one priority. Whilst our compliance team makes sure the most up-to-date procedures are followed, work practices are protective, and training is understood and followed, we expect everybody to share responsibility for health and safety in the workplace. Maintaining a safe work environment is part of our culture, and we take care that no physical, mental or emotional harm comes to our team members while they are at work.
Anticipating risks to accelerate action
At Cawood, we anticipate and prevent risks before they impact health, safety, motivation or productivity. We carry out thorough, regular risk assessments and have plans in place for effective risk mitigation. Health & safety is the first item on every meeting agenda, and our compliance team meets monthly with the site responsible person (SRP) and a site representative from the laboratory, to encourage consultation and open communication.
Regular training and awareness activities promote high safety standards and help engage all team members. Manual handling training is universal, and specific additional training is given depending on individual occupation. We also have an online e-learning platform to provide remote access to a wealth of information whenever it is required.
There are dedicated roles at every site committed to maintaining and enhancing health & safety, including fire marshals, first aiders, staff representatives, mental health first aiders, and laboratory instrument specialists. We make sure there is always someone onsite trained in emergency procedures.
Staying safe in high-risk laboratory environments
As the UK’s leading independent scientific group, we are committed to keeping our numerous laboratories as safe as possible. Everything we do in the laboratory, from air quality analysis to shelf life studies, is risk assessed and mitigated carefully to the highest standards of safety. Every chemical we work with is COSHH assessed, and we adhere to specialised control measures, policies and procedures to prevent exposure to hazardous agents, including providing team members with PPE and other protective equipment.
Emergency procedures, including regular chemical and biological spill and fire drills, make sure that procedures are followed and that teams react effectively in an emergency.
Whilst we invite an independent auditor to visit each site once a year, we also self-audit. This includes reviewing our own management systems and routine walkarounds of each site. We have rolled out daily production meetings within teams, with a health & safety briefing as the first topic. To increase visibility and accessibility of procedures and policies, there are whiteboards in every laboratory with health & safety statistics, and all staff can access information remotely through our Sharepoint site.
The present and future of health & safety at Cawood
We have made significant investment in health and safety training as a core priority. All supervisors and people leaders are now qualified to IOSH Managing Safely level, an internationally recognised standard in safety management. In addition, 15 colleagues have achieved the NEBOSH National Certificate in Safety, representing one of the highest levels of professional health and safety qualification.
Our electronic centralised reporting system records accidents and near-misses as part of our culture of continuous improvement in risk prevention. This switch from a paper-based to a digital system has enhanced risk management with more efficient organisation and reporting. It also makes it easy for team members to report hazards and near misses before they turn into accidents.
Cawood also understands the importance of looking after colleagues’ mental and emotional wellbeing. We have increased our investment in the mental wellbeing of our team members by continuing to create thriving workplace communities so that our people are fulfilled and engaged in the work that they do.
Our group e-learning training platform focusses on health & safety and compliance, so we know all team members have a collective and consistent understanding of procedures.
NRM: protecting colleagues with specialist equipment
Our laboratories at NRM contain a number of different potentially hazardous substances for agronomic and environmental waste analysis, including soil, manure, composted waste, and industrial renewables. To prevent ill-health and protect our team members, we provide protective headphones for noise control, eye protection, eye cleaning stations and specialised face masks in sections where we grind small particles, and steel-capped boots for heavy lifting, as well as the usual PPE and standard laboratory wear.
Marchwood: keeping dangerous chemicals at bay
Our Marchwood laboratories offer a range of specialist services for the environmental, occupational and food/feed sectors, which involve frequent handling of hazardous substances. Our new laboratory in Manchester stores hydrofluoric acid, which requires very strict health and safety measures due to its corrosive nature. The storage room has limited access and a chemical, wet scrub fume hood to ensure reliable fume containment. Those authorised to use this chemical have specific training and wear specialised PPE. We also have a buddy system in place so that a team member never works alone with this dangerous chemical, as well as a neutralising chemicals procedure, to counteract any accidents.
