Challenge
At UK Paper Hub, health, safety and sustainability are critical to our world-class operations. Over recent years we have gone through a safety journey lead by our group wide ‘Safety F1rst: one team, one goal’ initiative and strive for active communication and engagement to help us to continually improve and develop. As part of this we are always looking for opportunities to ‘break down barriers’, engage and collaborate with our customers, industry partners and internal stakeholders to enhance our knowledge and share our experiences.
Solution
Our customer’s Safety and Security Manager visited the UK Paper Hub site and shared their safety journey and challenges. A collaborative communication has been maintained with our Health, Safety and Environment advisor. Through this relationship, our customer learned more about our business and safety journey and felt we had a good safety culture, later inviting us to take part in their upcoming Safety Day.
Our team were honoured and excited to be invited to the safety event (along with 3 other maritime and logistics organisations), which was held at their head office in Finland. The ultimate objectives were to share information, network and learn about the safety cultures and mind-sets of other organisations, through discussion and insightful presentations.
As part of the event, we sent both our Health, Safety and Environment adviser along with a Port Operative who is also a health and safety representative. Our team were given the opportunity to present and we talked through the chapters of our safety journey; there was particular interest around how we have used technology such as safety animation videos, online health & safety software and hand–arm vibration management solutions to our enhance health, safety and engagement. The day highlighted the value in sharing ideas, challenges and experiences.
Value
From taking part in this collaborative safety event, we have developed stronger relationships with various partners across our paper and maritime network. Our team found the experience extremely rewarding, and gave valuable insights into our partner’s approaches to safety and highlighted the importance of sharing information and good practice, to continue to grow our safety culture alongside our global partners.
The parties who took part in the event have now also actively set up a communications platform to allow the collaboration to continue and improve safety together. The day was invaluable and our customer plans on running this event annually from now on – we look forward to seeing our friends again soon.
