Safety and wellness
Good safety is good business and at Hall’s we believe all work-related incidents and injuries are preventable.
The safety and wellness of everyone working for and with us is more than a priority – caring about the safety of our people and team members is a core value in our business. We’ve developed a comprehensive health and safety programme and a risk management framework that’s designed to help ensure people get home safe from work every day and safe out, if they are visitors to our sites. Our Health and Safety teams are constantly reviewing all our policies and procedures to develop a high priority health and safety culture.
Working safely is a condition of employment and a requirement for access to equipment and sites.
Leadership and Support
Team leaders and managers are committed to providing safety leadership that’s real, honest and effective with guidance, training and the right resources and information to support safe work behaviours. We have facilitated various training for the senior leadership team and team managers, including: fatigue management, leading effective safety behaviour conversations and observations, managing injuries of our people and return to work, and critical risk management.
Visitors
Visitors and temporary employees are asked to take our induction processes seriously and make sure they understand the hazards, the controls and any safety rules and standards that apply to our work sites – at every visit. Visitors must sign in when arriving onsite (and sign out when leaving) and adhere to any operational requirements if entering an operational area (e.g. PPE, safety boots, follow designated walkways, etc.).
Worker Engagement
Hall's believes that employee participation is important to create and maintain effective health, safety and wellbeing practices. Through engagement and participation, we are able to ensure our teams have the opportunity to be involved in the development and improvement of safe workplace practices. We work hard to foster an environment that allows people to speak up if they see unsafe practices or behaviours. We encourage immediate reporting of near misses or any incidents that may occur.
Sites will run toolbox meetings, daily ‘stand-up’ meetings, hazard workshops, health and safety committee meetings, etc.; all aimed at informing employees of anything health and safety-related, and more importantly, gathering feedback and suggestions for improvement. At the end of the day, we want to ensure that everyone goes home safely.
Injury management/rehabilitation
Hall’s Group is committed to the health and safety of its people. Where injuries or illness do occur, Hall’s recognises the importance of rehabilitation in achieving reintegration to the workplace. Our Rehabilitation Policy clearly sets out the responsibility for senior leaders, team managers and employees.
Critical Risks
Critical risks have been identified across storage and transport. Our health and safety teams conducted workshops to ensure our frontline workers fully understand these risks and how they are being managed to ensure everyone’s safety. Hall's Group have adapted the "Bowtie" risk-assessment methodology, which is a diagram that visualizes the risk you are dealing with in one, easy-to-understand picture.
Bowtie Risk-Assessment Methodology
The Bowtie method is a widely-accepted structured approach to presenting risk-based information. The visual nature of the methodology differentiates it from other accepted approaches and allows for much greater engagement and is easier to communicate to those exposed to the risk being analyzed.
A bowtie diagram primarily does two things:
It gives a visual summary of all plausible accident scenarios that could exist around a certain hazard
It highlights control measures that a business uses to control those scenarios
Once these two primary objectives are met, the Bowtie can be used to do a myriad of other things, including:
Allocating responsibility and accountability to specific controls
Identifying Critical Controls
Analyse the effectiveness of the controls
We have developed a manual to assist in the application and use of four specific risk management Bowties. Click here to view.
Below are the four Bowties (as per the manual) in more detail:
Bowtie 1: Refrigeration (Frame) Bowtie 1: Refrigeration (Detail) Using anhydrous ammonia as a refrigerant
Bowtie 2: Traffic (Frame) Bowtie 2: Traffic (Detail) Operating vehicles in proximity to pedestrians in a workplace
Bowtie 3: Mobile Plant (Frame) Bowtie 3: Mobile Plant (Detail) Operating mobile plant to move product
Bowtie 4: Heavy vehicles (Frame) Bowtie 4: Heavy vehicles (Detail) Driving a heavy vehicle
Stores environment
With Hall’s being in the cold chain logistics business, our transport and storage stores staff are exposed to various environmental conditions like extreme cold, ice and condensation, wet surfaces and more. Effective training to safely operate forklifts in temperature-controlled environments is critical. We’ve therefore worked with industry experts to help develop a specific forklift training module for freezer environments. The training manual can be viewed here, along with the accompanying ‘Temperature Controlled Environments Operator Assessment Notes’ and ‘Temperature Controlled Environments Marking Guide’.
A study was conducted to investigate the dual impact of cold and heat stress on workers in large freezer environments, where temperatures are consistently below freezing (-18 degrees celsius). An abstract from the study - ‘Cold and Heat Stress in Large Freezers and Chillers’, can be viewed here.
The ensuing ‘Clothing Guide’ provides advice and recommendations for protective personal clothing and footwear for use in large freezer and chiller environments. This guide is borne from the recommendations formed from the study.
Read our Hall’s Health and Safety Policy and our Drug and Alcohol Policy below