“Safety is one of Compass Group SA's key driving strategies. We have a simple objective: to strive for zero incidents ensuring that all employees return home safely to family and friends,” says Jane Russill, Compass Group SA National SHE Manager.
SHE is growing in importance for a large number of South African companies. “New Compass Group SA clients are required to identify their most important issues – and SHE is constantly rated as one of the top five concerns for most of these companies,” says Russill. “Consumer conscience has driven the need for a well defined health and safety strategy.”
The company's team observes the strategy of the business and develops and implements workable outcomes in line with legal and legislative requirements. The team ensures that each operation meets the standards set out by the Occupational Health and Safety Act, and the Health Act.
“All food service operations are audited by third party independent auditors on a quarterly basis – a service we have outsourced to our partner, Africon,” says Russill.
Compass Group SA's safety system is holistic; and embraces a number of stakeholders including employees, customers and suppliers. The group also aligns itself closely to international trends and adheres to safety reporting requirements and trend monitoring that facilitates corrective action and thereby ultimately reducing the number of incidents overall through education and changing the behaviour of the people involved in the daily activities.
“We have robust systems that meet international standards and we continuously review and re-align our strategies, which allow us to provide services to both small and large companies. Our expertise enables us to educate our clients in terms of legislation and other legal requirements relevant to the services that we are responsible to deliver,” concludes Russill.
