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How we manage health and safety

We manage health and safety through an integrated environment, health and safety (EHS) management system. The system incorporates our EHS and Employee Health Policies, EHS Vision and 64 Global EHS Standards. Our EHS Plan for Excellence sets out our strategy for improving EHS performance up to 2010. See more on our EHS Management System.

Our corporate environment, health and safety (CEHS) and employee health management (EHM) teams help coordinate our health and safety programmes. See more on our EHS Management Organisation.

In these pages we summarise activities during 2004 that relate specifically to health and safety. See the EHS Management section of our Corporate Responsibility Report for information on how we manage environmental and broader EHS issues.

Health and safety feedback from our EHS audits
(Not verified)

We aim to conduct EHS audits at each operational site at least once every four years. We carry out more frequent visits at selected sites, depending on an assessment of risk and the issues raised by previous audits. In 2004, 33 sites were audited including three key office locations. The average score was 71%.

Our audits identified several priority areas:

• Chemical risk assessment and control
• Managing resilience and mental well-being
• Ergonomic risk assessment and control
• Scope and adequacy of workplace risk assessments
• Management systems approach to auditing EHS programmes
• Root cause analysis of EHS incidents
• Implementation of permit-to-work programmes
• Management of contractors

All sites are required to develop plans to address any weaknesses and opportunities to improve identified in the audit. Auditors monitor sites’ progress in implementing the plans. In 2004 the EHS audit process and scoring system were further refined based on experience and feedback. We are trialling EHS auditing software on our intranet site to help the auditors track progress, and aim to have a fully functional version ready in 2005.

OHSAS 18001 certification
In 2004, four sites achieved certification to the international health and safety standard OHSAS 18001 for the first time. This brings the total number of manufacturing sites certified to 14 out of 84 pharmaceutical and consumer manufacturing sites with one additional site that certified only the utilities area. The certified sites are in China, Egypt, France, India, Mexico, Poland, Turkey and the UK. See audits and certification for information on certification to the environmental management standard ISO14001.

Health and safety week
GSK runs an annual Health and Safety Week every October (to coincide with the European Health and Safety week). Information kits are sent to all sites to help them develop ideas and plan activities. In 2004, over 13,800 employees from 67 sites in 29 countries took part in the Health and Safety Week. Activities included sports days, safe driving education, ergonomics training, awareness-raising on healthy eating and lifestyles, and family participation events.

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