Health & safety policy

At Unison, ‘Safety and Wellbeing’ is the first of our five core values.

We care for the safety of our people, families and communities.

Unison is committed to:

• The prevention of harm to our workers, visitors, members of the public
• Providing safe and healthy work conditions and environments
• Providing a workplace that has a positive impact on employees physical and mental health
• Achieving the highest level of health and safety practices and management systems
• Consulting, enabling participation and communicating with Unison workers, customers, stakeholders and members of the public on health and safety matters.

To achieve this Unison will:

• Establish best practice health and safety and public safety management systems and a wellbeing programme
• Ensure the above management systems interface with other management systems and are regularly monitored and reviewed
• Comply with relevant legislation, regulations, approved codes of practice for the management of health and safety of our workers, visitors and members of the public
• Identify, assess and control health and safety risks
• Eliminate health and safety hazards and risks in the first instance so far as is reasonably practicable, and where this is not reasonably practicable, minimise those risks
• Aim to establish controls to provide the highest level of protection against harm or damage that our assets or operations may cause to others
• Establish strategies, goals and objectives to maintain and continually improve our health and safety and public safety management systems
• Establish processes to protect and support physical and mental health including the safe return to work of injured or ill workers
• Monitor and continually improve our health and safety performance
• Accurately report, record and learn from all incidents, injuries, illnesses and near miss events
• Promote a culture of learning when things go right or go wrong with workers and interested parties
• Ensure our workers have the appropriate instruction, skills, training and confidence to be healthy and safe at work
• Ensure health and safety expectations are regularly communicated and reinforced
• Support workers to stop any work activity if health and/or safety would be compromised

At Unison this means we all need to:

• Take personal responsibility for the health and safety of ourselves and others
• Understand and comply with this policy including all relevant health and safety and public safety policies and procedures
• Demonstrate empathy, normalise conversations on the physical and mental health of ourselves and others and offer support where needed
• Question or stop any work activity if health and/or safety would be compromised, or the requirements are unclear.

Form issued under HS0001 Health and Safety Policy. Uncontrolled when printed. Classification – public.