Promoting a safe working environment
Wincanton helps our people to support our customers by delivering the highest standards in safety. Our priority is to safeguard the well-being of our people, our customers and the wider public through ongoing health and safety education at every level of the business.
An award-winning health and safety programme
Our award-winning health and safety programme sets us apart by educating, raising awareness and engaging teams in an active safety culture. And this approach is working. Over the past five years we have reduced incident levels by 34% and continue making progress against our goals every year.
Putting our employees' health first
Wincanton is committed to preventing all work-related injuries and illnesses using the DuPont ‘zero tolerance’ principle. To deliver this commitment, Wincanton operates a common framework to bring together all aspects of our Safety, Health and Environment (SHE) approach, supported by a set of ‘Key Health & Safety Principles’ with minimum safety standards. The framework underpinning Wincanton’s SHE culture is an ongoing programme of ambitious objectives:
- to raise the profile of safety, health and environment at work
- to have in place robust systems which comply with BS OHSAS 18001
- to capture best practice and find new ways of preventing accidents and ill-health
- to work with industry bodies and government regulators to help influence strategic thinking
Wincanton invests heavily in training, sets demanding performance targets, and measures progress to ensure continuous improvement in SHE performance. The benefit of this approach has been to position Wincanton as employers of choice for the changing world of work, to reduce both insured and uninsured costs, and to demonstrate 
industry-leading SHE standards to our customers and investors.
For example, our award winning SHELA campaign has been spreading the SHE message since 2005. SHELA (which stands for Safety Health and Environment Learning Aid) is one of the most easily instantly recognisable symbols of our safety culture across the whole business.
Occupational health
Within a highly pressurised working environment, occupational health is essential to our success. As an employer we recognise our ‘duty of care’ to the health and wellbeing of our workforce. Ill health impacts our businesses both directly and indirectly, whether it is about the financial repercussions or the loss of productivity and staff motivation. Over the years we have found that, having a robust occupational health service reduces absence, saves money and increases employee wellbeing.
For this reason we have partnered with occupational health experts, Atos Healthcare. Atos occupational health practitioners understand our business, and are part of our team. They provide guidance and support for managers to enable them to handle employees’ health problems in the most appropriate manner. They also share best practice gained from other industries.