Managing Health and Safety

Health and Safety Review Committee

A culture of safety starts at the top. Volker Beckers, our CEO, is responsible for championing safety across RWE npower. Our Health and Safety Review Committee, which is independently chaired by Jonson Cox, meets at least twice a year.

At these committee meetings, Board members, the heads of our businesses and specialist advisers, review targets and identify any areas for improvement, as well as making recommendations to the Board. All our line managers have primary responsibility for managing health and safety within their teams and receive specialist support from our Health and Safety department.

Employee-led safety

Our people are often in the best position to spot and help solve potential safety risks. That’s why we encourage them to have a personal sense of responsibility for safety. We have established groups that are dedicated to health and safety at sites across the business, ranging from employee-led safety groups to safety advisory committees. These groups ensure that everyone has a chance to speak up and to help identify and address potential health and safety risks.

Training and awareness

Through training and a range of awareness raising activities, we aim to ensure that all our managers and employees have the necessary knowledge, attitude, training and experience to undertake their roles safely. Our awareness raising activities are tailored to the specific needs of the business. Everyone gets health and safety training as part of their induction when they join the company, with training being tailored to particular jobs and sites.

Specific training is delivered on a wide range of subjects; for example, meter installation operatives get specialised electrical safety training. We also have a programme of ‘no-notice checks’ (arriving at sites without notice) to check that our safety measures are working effectively, along with an annual competition, during which all of our office sites are judged on their health and safety performance.

Working with our contractors

We work with a wide range of contractors across our business - some work on our premises for us, while others deliver services to customers on our behalf. In addition to actively managing the health and safety performance of all our contractors, we are committed to working with them to continually improve this.