Veolia, strongly committed to workplace health and safety, celebrated its 10th annual International Health and Safety Week last week, from September 16th to 20th. This year’s edition was another success, with teams across the world engaging in activities from wild animal wrangling to escape games as they shared and reinforced best practices around the common theme “Let’s break the routine!”
A global annual commitment
Every year since 2015, Veolia has marked International Health and Safety Week, a special five-day focus on workplace conditions that underscores the Group’s commitment to occupational risk prevention everywhere, all the time, and for all parties. The occasion brings together employees, subcontractors and stakeholders with a view toward further improving health and safety culture at the Group. Since the inaugural edition of the event, there has been a 60% drop in the lost time accident frequency rate, demonstrating the seriousness of Veolia teams to protecting their work environments and colleagues.
“Let’s break the routine!”
The theme of this year’s International Health and Safety at Work week was “Let’s break the routine!” While routines can be a source of efficiency and consistency, saving time and energy, such repetition can be risky, leading to inattention and unconscious mistakes.
By stressing the importance of health and safety at work, the international week strengthens the safety culture at all our Group’s entities. This has positive impacts on the health and well-being of our employees and external stakeholders. The progress we have made demonstrates the depth of our teams’ engagement on this major issue
Estelle Brachlianoff, Chief Executive Officer of Veolia.
And indeed, teams broke the routine–including in how they marked the occasion. In addition to workshops, trainings, and presentations, games provided a fun way to reinforce best practices in Central West France where teams created a board game focused on safe driving practices, and in Poland, where employees enjoyed an escape game simulating the secure evacuation of a wastewater treatment plant. VEOLIA SARPI teams used virtual reality to better understand safety rules. Chilean employees heard from local rally raid motorcycle rider Chaleco Lopez about safe driving practices and accident prevention. Rounding out these diverse initiatives, in Singapore, employees learned how to safely handle wild animals, including snakes and lizards.
Cultivating an exemplary health and safety culture
International Health and Safety Week is a moment to bring global teams together and foster best practice sharing and cooperation among the Group’s 218,000 employees. Once again this year, Veolia challenged its teams with the 2024 Always Safe Awards, inspired by Veolia’s signature “Copy & Adapt” approach whereby business units and regions take inspiration from existing practices and adapt them to their local realities. Three winners will be recognized by the Executive Committee on November 4th.
Meet Ariska, our Indonesian resourcer giving a second life to plastic bottles
KEY FIGURES
10th edition
of the International Health & Safety Week
60%
drop in the lost time accident frequency rate since 2015
Zero Accident
Group target