“Our priority is to set non-negotiable standards to be delivered and maintained by our colleagues for our customers and communities, resulting in an outstanding Health and Safety culture. We trust and empower everyone to promote a positive and inclusive Health & Safety environment through continuous learning, cross-functional involvement and operational excellence.”
Primark
Primark implements Safety Culture Audits across its global group to support its “Safe Today. Safe Tomorrow” strategy.
Client Profile
Primark is an international retailer offering the latest fashion, beauty and homeware at the highest value on the high street. Primark opened its first store in Dublin in 1969 under the name Penneys and today operates over 400 stores in 14 countries across Europe and America.
Safe Today. Safe Tomorrow.
At Primark, their colleagues’ and customers’ health, safety and well-being are top priorities. To help ensure its global business remains focused and aligned on this important work, Primark launched its first-ever business-wide safety strategy in 2021: “Safe Today. Safe Tomorrow.”
Through this strategic initiative, and guided by a best practice framework, the Primark EHS team outlined key milestones, goals and objectives to ensure, as a business, that Primark is proactively working towards its goal of no injuries or illnesses as a result of its activities and service.
The Primark Health and Safety vision is to achieve these world-class safety standards throughout its global business, including retail stores, offices and depots.
Greg Ramsbottom, Head of EHS at Primark, leads this world-class safety strategy through the global Primark Group.
Greg and his team commenced the first phase of their Health and Safety Culture roadmap in 2019 and the second phase early in 2021, spearheaded by their “Safe Today. Safe Tomorrow” strategy.
Primark understands that safety culture is a journey, but workforce engagement and management commitment to leading safety effectively are key components of that journey.
“To bring our “Safe Today. Safe Tomorrow” strategy to life and support the business in achieving best-in-class status for workplace safety, it’s essential that we all play our part.”
- Greg Ramsbottom, EHS Lead, Primark
The Challenge
Primark’s “Safe Today. Safe Tomorrow” strategy promotes an environment of high Health & Safety compliance standards, continuous learning, and operational excellence. An important cornerstone of Primark’s Safety Culture roadmap is the ability to accurately audit safety compliance and cultural measures such as behaviour, leadership and colleague awareness. The Primark EHS Team wanted to design a specific audit that reflected their safety vision and fit with their Safety Culture journey.
“Our previous audit was too focused on compliance only. We wanted to design and implement an external audit process that accurately captured and positioned our safety performance along compliance and behavioural pillars. We engaged SeaChange to help design and deliver a novel audit for our group because they have the experience, expertise and innovation to align with our Safety Culture roadmap.”
- Greg Ramsbottom, EHS Lead, Primark
The Solution
Primark engaged the services of Safety Culture experts SeaChange to help design and deliver a new EHS audit within the global group.
In 2020 SeaChange, in collaboration with the Primark EHS team, designed, developed and implemented a novel EHS audit that could accurately measure both EHS systems and behaviours on a site-per-site basis across the Primark group.
As their external safety partner, SeaChange provides Primark with the expertise to deliver this novel audit annually to all its stores, depots and offices. This novel audit can assess safety system compliance and safety culture performance to support the overall Primark Safety Culture roadmap.
“Primark is leading the way in adopting best practices to measure and grow safety culture within the retail industry. They understand the importance of personal accountability, leadership and behaviour when building a sustainable safety culture. We are happy to support Primark in their Safety Culture journey.”
- Dr Paul Cummins, Managing Director, Seachange Ltd.
The Result
Since launching the new EHS Audit, Primark has been able to better assess and support its overall safety vision by interpreting results.
The new audit’s ability to measure behaviours, leadership and overall safety culture, and compliance provides a much more accurate picture of where the business sits within its overall safety culture roadmap. The process provides key recommendations on safety systems and behaviours, enabling a robust mechanism to assess progress and action key risk items as a result of each audit. The new audit fits Primark’s “Safe Today. Safe Tomorrow.” strategy and supports site management in owning their own safety standards across the global business.
Greg Ramsbottom | EHS Lead
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