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• Training and awareness

Corporate Responsibility Report 2008

Training and awareness

We provide detailed guidelines and technical information as part of the framework for managing environment, health, safety and sustainability (EHSS).

Training and awareness programmes, based on the guidelines, inform employees at all levels about risks, to create a culture where EHSS considerations are integral to the way we do business, and to help employees understand the EHSS issues specific to their jobs.

Most EHSS training is managed by the sites and is specific to job roles. EHSS professionals receive induction training and undertake regular training to ensure they are aware of the latest technical information in their fields. Business leaders also receive training so that they understand their responsibilities. In 2008 we reviewed our training programme and found opportunities to improve and standardise EHSS training across GSK in 2009. We will also include EHSS competency as part of the job grading programme for all employees with EHSS responsibilities.

Read more about health and safety training.

We raise employee awareness of environment, health, safety and sustainability and provide training support materials through our intranet, regular internal publications and events.

myEHSS intranet

Our intranet is becoming the primary mechanism to communicate within the company. There are several areas of the GSK intranet that support EHSS including the main site known as myEHSS. myEHSS is the way news about EHSS programmes is shared. It is the source of supporting materials for the framework for managing EHSS such as the policy, standards and guidelines and for training materials and other documents about EHSS. myEHSS is also the basis for the information system with which we collect the data for measuring our EHSS performance and reporting results within GSK and to our external stakeholders. GSK sites use the data to manage their EHSS programmes and risks and to measure their progress.

Publications

Our EHSS publications are available electronically and in print. We publish articles on environment, health, safety and sustainability in Spirit, our internal magazine and brief news stories on internal web pages.

Events

Our sites participate in Earthweek, an annual, voluntary programme to raise awareness of strategic environmental issues and to encourage integrating environmental concerns into the culture. Held in June to coincide with the World Environment Day, Earthweek encourages employees to think about their impact on the environment. In 2008, over 13,000 employees from 48 sites in 24 countries took part in Earthweek. We sent information kits to all sites to help them develop their own activities including tree planting, clearing litter from a local forest and involving local school children in drawing competitions with an environmental theme. In 2009, operations will be encouraged to continue their voluntary environmental activities but they will no longer be organised centrally.

Awards

The CEO’s EHS Excellence Award website was a vehicle for sharing the innovative EHS practices of sites or teams that won the annual awards. In 2009 this will be replaced by the website supporting the CEO’s Awards for Sustainability.