“SeaChange have an innovative approach to risk management. Their interactive systems connect best practice Health & Safety behaviours to operators and management alike. They have a common sense approach that creates a culture of ownership for safety standards and delivers results. We are more aware of how to identify and control risk, and the SeaChange partnership is highly supportive within our large property management group”.
Bannon
Bannon partners with SeaChange and shows how to manage Health and Safety in a large commercial property portfolio
Client Profile
Bannon is a leading Irish Property Management Group that manages a diverse commercial property portfolio, including shopping centres, retail parks, office blocks and business parks. Their large property portfolio consists of over 50 locations comprising over 7 million square feet. Their well-known portfolio is visited by over 100 million people each year.
The Challenge
For Bannon Property Management Group, health and safety is a core management responsibility and pillar to their business.
As Ray Geraghty — property management director with Bannon — puts it, “We are in the business of inviting people into our shopping centres, retail parks, office blocks and business parks. Thus, we have a responsibility to each and every visitor from a health and safety perspective”.
Each of the properties held within the Bannon portfolio is owned by a different company and the directors of these companies are ultimately responsible for health and safety. But as their property manager, Bannon, also has a contractual responsibility for health and safety throughout their portfolio.
For Bannon, with such a high footfall, managing slips, trips and falls is top on their list of safety challenges. In addition to managing slips, trips and falls, Bannon are concerned with ensuring that a proactive safety culture is fostered within the portfolio so that both staff and customers avoid the risk of injury while the group can manage its insurance costs as an indirect benefit.
Bannon went to market to find a Health and Safety partner to support their ambition to grow their portfolio’s safety compliance and safety culture.
The Solution
In 2016, Bannon chose SeaChange — a health and safety consultancy specialising in safety culture partnerships and behaviour-based risk management systems — as its health and safety partner across their entire portfolio. Bannon liked SeaChange’s behavioural-based approach to safety management, recognising its importance in improving safety performance over time.
After identifying the client’s requirements, SeaChange provided Bannon with their Safety Culture Pro Partnership on a per site basis. For all sites within the portfolio, this partnership included an initial risk assessment, compliance provisions (i.e. safety statement), a visual risk awareness system and site champion leadership training. In addition, each site adopted the SeaChange Slip, Trip and Fall Prevention system to manage what is a key risk within the Bannon portfolio. Each Bannon site has access to the SeaChange client portal to track proactive safety KPIs and are audited annually through the SeaChange Safety Culture (SABRE™) audit — a method by which SeaChange benchmark safety culture performance across the group.
During the SeaChange partnership process, a health and safety champion is trained by SeaChange, certified and appointed on every site to properly run SeaChange Systems, promote best practice, and ensure health and safety is being managed from the ground up. The benefit is that there is ‘a trickle-down effect’ where the workforce is engaged and empowered to take accountability for our expected safety standards.
According to Ray Geraghty, another aspect of the SeaChange system that appeals to Bannon is that “it is very visual onsite”. It is tangible to everyone, from the centre manager to the cleaning staff; it is not simply a safety statement that is left to gather dust on a shelf. Within the SeaChange system, every person has a level of responsibility. There is “a general awareness on site, with safety then becoming habitual”.
The Results
The Bannon Property Management Group have seen significant improvements in their Safety Culture since they began working with SeaChange. The implementation of the innovative safety systems SeaChange provide has improved safety compliance and behaviours for both staff and contractors across the group. Some of the notable results observed since partnering with SeaChange include the following:
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63% increase in local safety correctives
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82% increase in operator risk awareness and training
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75% decrease in lost time incidents
The group outcome of working with SeaChange has been the creation of a standardised approach to Health and Safety on all properties across the Bannon portfolio. There is now an ethos that Health and Safety is the number one priority on the list.
By adopting an active safety management policy through the SeaChange Partnership across the extensive property portfolio it manages, Bannon not only complies with the duty of employers, where they share places of work, to co-operate, as required by the SHWW Act 2005 (section 21), but has become an exemplar in the property management industry and — in the terminology of the health and safety profession — a health and safety influencer.
Ray Geraghty | Divisional Director, Bannon
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