Our responsible business commitment to improve the health, safety and wellbeing of our people and communities.
We will report on our progress against our Thrive365 strategy and continue to report the number of health and safety regulation breaches. For mental health and wellbeing we will develop volunteering opportunities.
Desired impact – For South East Water to ensure all employees, partners and communities go home safely each night, but that they are also enjoying good health and wellbeing.
How have we performed?
Health and safety remain a pre-condition and embedded in everything we do. Last summer we held a health and safety conference for 400 operational colleagues, including our contractors. This focussed on safety cultures and behaviours and included an address from former water pipe technician Justin Manley who champions workplace safety after suffering a near fatal accident. We’re reviewing our shift patterns to ensure safety is never compromised by long shifts and working hours. We also ran a campaign among non-operational colleagues in offices and at home to raise awareness of workplace slips, trips and falls and rolled out e-training on this.
We launched a new online reporting tool, ANMEL (Accident, Near Miss and Environmental Log) to encourage reporting of issues and to streamline our investigation process. This new mobile platform has made it easier and quicker for colleagues to report concerns and gives us instant information.
We’re proud of our ongoing focus on wellbeing and have 43 Mental Health First Aiders dedicated to supporting our employees. We continue to raise this profile with a monthly focus on different wellbeing areas, reassuring employees that it is ok to talk and open up about their concerns.
Our Wellbeing Strategy launched three years ago continues to be valued by all colleagues in the business. This was endorsed by South East Water winning a Gold Kent & Medway workplace wellbeing award. We have continued to focus on what matters to our colleagues through our four pillars supporting with practical advice and support on the cost-of-living crisis and how to improve and maintain physical and mental health. We currently have 42 Mental Health First Aiders and 37 Wellbeing Champions. External experts and charities continue to provide their expertise; for example, All Able have completed sessions and drop ins with colleagues, providing digital accessibility tips to improve how we communicate internally and with our customers and deliver accessible and inclusive services that work for everyone.
