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Health and safety

The health and safety of employees and contractors is an absolute priority for GSK. We systematically assess the risks associated with our operations and take action to protect employees and others in the workplace.

We track the number of cases of work-related injury and illness resulting in time off work. Our target is to reduce work-related lost time injuries and illnesses per 100,000 employees by 15% every year until the end of 2005. During 2004 our injury and illness rate remained almost constant and therefore we did not meet our target. This may be partially explained by improvements in our reporting systems, including training, resulting in more accurate data.

We will redouble our efforts to resume the positive trend established between 2001 and 2003 that led to a 30% reduction in the illness and injury rate.

We routinely monitor the causes of incidents and assess what can be learned to avoid them happening again.

About the Health and Safety section of this report
This is the 5th year that we have reported on our health and safety performance. The legacy companies (Glaxo Wellcome and SmithKline Beecham) individually published EHS reports for a number of years prior to the formation of GSK in 2000. Copies of these reports are available on the Corporate Register website.

In previous years, we have published a separate EHS report alongside our Corporate Responsibility Report, but this year we have fully integrated the two.

There are also more details about our corporate responsibility reporting in the section about this report.

Scope of data
The health and safety data covers the calendar year 2004. It is collected from all our 84 pharmaceutical and consumer manufacturing sites, 6 of 8 biologicals manufacturing sites and all 24 R&D sites as well as all 6 distribution centres, all 6 major office locations and 63 of our smaller offices and sales locations. We include data for sites that were in operation for all or part of the year.

Notes attached to the charts explain the scope and data collection process for each parameter in more detail.

Verification
The environment, health and safety sections of this report are externally verified by ERM (Environmental Resources Management). Web pages to which the verification applies are indicated by the symbol displayed on the right.

See ERM’s verification statement.

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