Health & Safety
The health and safety of our people is of overriding concern to us. We believe that good safety and health practices in the workplace contribute to the success of a business. Through our operating companies, we are committed to maintaining and improving our standards.
Health and Safety policy
Our global policy was adopted in 2005 following consultation with our operating companies. The global policy provides a framework against which our operating companies adopt and review their own policies, procedures and specific objectives. The global policy is available in the policies and downloads section of this website.
Health and Safety Performance Indicators
We have developed a consistent framework for capturing health and safety performance data across the company. We report here on our performance against four key indicators relating to employees:
Fatalities - deaths as a result of an event or exposure that takes place on Pearson premises or are as a result of any other work related event.
Major injuries and illness such as fractures (not to digits), amputations, dislocations, permanent or temporary loss of sight, acute or chronic occupational illness.
All other injuries and illness - injuries and illness not covered by the above. This can include cuts, sprains, and fractures to digits.
Enforcement notices or prosecutions - received from national regulators.
In addition, our businesses adopt, track and internally report on additional measures of health and safety performance appropriate to the nature of the business and country of operation.
Health and Safety performance
We continue to introduce new and improved procedures to encourage employees to report incidents. Against this backdrop, we are pleased that the relatively low level of incidents reported in 2008 has continued into 2009. The enforcement notice issued in 2009 related to a motor accident in our business in India. This has been investigated with a view to ensuring we learn the appropriate lessons from the incident.
Health & Safety
| 2007 Group Figures | 2008 Group Figures | 2009 Group Figures | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Number | Rate per 1,000 employees | Number | Rate per 1,000 employees | Number | Rate per 1,000 employees | |
| Employees | 31,622 | 33,584 | 37,164 | |||
| Fatalities | 1 | 0 | 0 | |||
| Major injuries & work related illness | 20 | 0.63 | 8 | 0.24 | 13 | 0.35 |
| All other injuries & work related illness | 1079 | 34.1 | 974 | 29 | 1347 | 36.2 |
| Enforcement notices or prosecutions | 0 | 0 | 1 | |||
Health and Safety initiatives
Pearson people work in offices, data and contact centres and in distribution centres. We adopt a risk-based approach to health & safety paying particular attention to facilities such as distribution centres with relatively higher rate of incidents. By understanding the risks of injury, we are better equipped to prevent them from occurring. During 2009, we:
- Achieved certification against OSHAS 18001, the internationally recognised health & safety management standard at our Rugby Distribution Centre in the UK. We were also awarded the British Safety Council Five Star Award for our health & safety practice at Rugby.
- Increased the scale and reach of health and safety training in the UK reaching over 7,500 employees
- Developed safety scorecards to help our operating companies and individual facility managers to monitor and achieve their safety goals
- Expanded the scope of the Pearson Emergency Response Team initiative to include 40 teams comprising around 450 members.
- Building on our ergonomics pilot, established a new Committee to oversee the implementation of the programme across the US
In the US, where we employ most people, we continue to promote our safety and risk management website established in 2008. This continues to be popular bringing together in one easy to use site policies, procedures, training materials and methods for sharing good practice. This has been mirrored in the UK by a dedicated health & safety SharePoint site targeted at health & safety professionals and available to all employees.
Health and Safety targets for 2010 and 2011
Targets for 2010 include:
- Building on the Rugby Distribution Centre pilot, to extend accreditation against OSHAS 18001 to cover all Pearson operations in the UK.
- Extending the reach of health & safety training in the UK by expanding mandatory fire, manual handling and workstation training for Pearson operations
- Incorporating new acquisition Melorio into the Pearson health & safety management approach.
- Introduce a new injury and illness prevention program in the US. This programme builds on ANSI Z10, the US health & safety standard.
- Continue the implementation of the ergonomic programme into 10 sites in the US, with the 2011 objective for the programme to be available to all sites.