Seventh year of health and safety success for Leeds Beckett

The RoSPA Awards, now in their 60^th year, recognise commitment to continuous improvement in accident and ill health prevention at work. Through the scheme, which is open to businesses and organisations of all types and sizes from across the UK and overseas, judges consider entrants’ overarching occupational health and safety management systems, including practices such as leadership and workforce involvement.

Speaking after the announcement, John Hamilton, Head of Safety, Health and Wellbeing at Leeds Beckett University (pictured above), said: “Achieving RoSPA Gold for the seventh year is fantastic recognition for everyone across our University who works hard to make sure the place we work and study in is safe and healthy. One of the initiatives that we have been most proud of this year is our employee wellbeing engagement, which included our 2015 Beckett Steps challenge. A total of 380 members of staff (around one in five of our campus-based staff) took a total of 180 million steps – over 90,000 miles, in the initiative which challenged team members to average 10,000 steps a day for six weeks. This year’s challenge is about to get started, with nearly twice the number of employees taking part as last year.”

Alongside the success of wellbeing engagement projects such as Beckett Steps, which get staff involved with a holistic approach to wellbeing and offers the opportunity for masters students at the University to engage in research studies around their success, key initiatives leading to Leeds Beckett’s success in this year’s awards include the development of bespoke training and development programmes within faculties and services across the University. 

Safety, Health and Wellbeing Coordinators ensure a strong commitment and culture of positivity towards health and safety management whilst a bespoke approach to training makes sure that staff receive appropriate support for their needs: for example manual handling, dealing with hazardous substances in laboratories or general health and safety updates for groups who may find it difficult to access a computer to complete online training.

Julia Small, RoSPA’s Head of Awards and Events, added: “To win an award at such a highly-regarded event as the RoSPA Awards is a great achievement for our winners. It recognises their commitment to maintaining an excellent health and safety record and raises the bar for other organisations to aspire to. We offer them our congratulations.

“This year was doubly special for our winners as their achievements were recognised as the RoSPA Awards celebrated its diamond anniversary, which is a ringing endorsement of the thousands of businesses and organisations that have committed to continuous improvement in accident and ill-health prevention.”

The Gold medal will be presented at a ceremony at the Hilton Birmingham Metropole Hotel, at the National Exhibition Centre, on Thursday 14 July. The majority of RoSPA’s awards are non-competitive and mark achievement at merit, bronze, silver and gold levels.