The food and drink manufacturing industry is the single biggest manufacturing sector in the UK, with a turnover of £95.4 billion. The industry also has more than 400,000 employed workers which accounts for nearly 17% of the overall manufacturing industry. These are not statistics to take lightly and undermine the importance of this industry to the country both as a form of income and suitable employment to many. For these reasons, it is crucial that companies are able to manage operations efficiently and adhere to rules and regulations. The operational risk and health and safety side of things carries added weight when such a large part of the economy and the country’s workforce relies on the industry but also when the output feeds the country.

 

In food and drink manufacturing, there is naturally the safety of employees to consider but there is also the consumer’s health to consider. Any faux pas within this area can have a hugely damaging effect on a company’s bottom line. It can lead to fines in the millions of pounds or, potentially even more costly, can lead to a company’s reputation being irreversibly damaged. Consumers and the media can largely accept that mistakes are made within businesses of varying sizes but health and safety resonates differently. In fact when people are involved in mistakes whether it is their health, safety or labour rights, things become personal – the wider consumer base can relate.

 

Our work with British Sugar demonstrated that a company may believe that they are doing everything they can from an operational risk point of view but without the technology enablers on hand to embed good process and governance, this can be difficult. 

With the help of around 1000 employees and 1100 contractors working across four processing sites and two distribution centres, British Sugar produces over 1 million tonnes of sugar for human consumption and an additional 500,000 tonnes of animal feed every year. Many of these processes involve hazardous waste management, including the need to contain potentially explosive sugar dust.

Health and safety has always been a priority for the company but a serious safety lapse in 2003 lead to an extensive review of the company’s existing health & safety management policies. The review uncovered a large gap between training people in procedures, such as hazardous waste management, and people actually following them, as well as a disparity in the number of RIDDOR incidents being recorded due to the manual reporting system making it difficult to compile comprehensive reports.

 

British Sugar used the incident as a springboard to completely revolutionise its health and safety procedures. They brought us in to help them develop a centralised incident tracking system, improving the collation of incident data, ensuring prompt investigation of incidents and dramatically enhancing trend analysis while ensuring corrective actions were managed quickly and appropriately. The technology also encouraged transparency and involvement in health and safety across all levels of management.

 

For example, whenever an incident is logged, emails are automatically sent to relevant members of staff and Board members, meaning directors become instantly aware of situations and can immediately call factory managers to find out if they need any help. Once best practice has been established at one site, it can then be replicated across the business. 

 

It is believed that this level of involvement and commitment really makes a difference and has helped to improve line management accountability for safety, driving operational excellence and allowing British Sugar to be more proactive in its approach to managing health and safety in areas including operational risk, incident report and hazardous waste management.

 

Since making these changes, British Sugar is now at the forefront of efficient health and safety, having recorded a 75% drop in RIDDOR incidents. It has also extended its use of Rivo to sister companies Silver Spoon and Jordans Ryvita. 

 

Marston’s is another example of where health and safety input has seen the company reap rewards. They are a household name and one of the country’s top pub businesses and a leading brewer of premium cask and bottled beers. It has a workforce of 13,000 across multiple sites and is listed as a FTSE top 250 company.

The company has always regarded health and safety as extremely important but when working with a risk management software specialist, they were able to see that more could be done. We have helped them operate sophisticated electronic systems for incident recording and accident analysis and auditing, in order to better understand the nature of accidents occurring and to take the actions necessary to avoid them.

 

In 2013 Marston’s also implemented a driver telematics system which tracks and measures how safely their drivers are operating in their commercial vehicles. The system has already contributed to an improvement in driver behaviour. In 2014 it was reported that following improvements in the training and better staff engagement, the accident rate amongst production and distribution staff areas had fallen by 27%. This highlights that when health and safety is taken seriously and procedures are implemented to a high standard, then real differences can be made.

 

As both British Sugar and Marston’s have shown, companies must have a progressive culture when it comes to risk management; social responsibility needs to be driven from the top. It lies with CEO and company board to drive social responsibility and engrain it into the DNA of the company. Operational risk and social responsibility are intrinsically related and if both are not taken seriously enough then just ‘getting the job done’ without due care can easily prevail. Companies need to be conducting the right processes and procedures as well as, and this is where our own services come in, having the right technology in place. It’s very much about improving the visibility of risk in your operations; where is the risk happening and why is it happening?

 

If your technology allows you to pull that information together in a single system which allows you to view complex analytics in a straightforward way, that is one of the big battles won – especially if it also allows you to pipe in best in class procedures for your industry or the legal obligations you have to adhere to in a particular country or region. It is crucial you are able to provide enough information, in an accessible form, to those at the top of the chain in order for them to make the right decisions but also it is crucial that you empower the other 99% of your organisation with the tools to manage as much of the risk at source. 

 

The right technology is essential as it enables companies to do what they have been missing out on in the past. It allows companies to use the same system around the world for all of their operations, whether they have internet capability or not, and identify potential risks. In turn, one then has the opportunity to collate this in to a single risk universe and then analyse that data easily to come to key decisions. This involves exactly where potential risks are occurring within the operation and, in particular, why environments are hazardous and why certain incidents are happening. Risk management technology also enables these companies to conclude and work out what they need to do in order to find a solution to these problems.

 

Having the sufficient risk management procedures and processes in place can help you stand out from your competition and have a long-lasting positive effect on your company’s bottom line. This helps to create sustainable business and will force others in your sector to react. It is a lesson that companies in the food and drink industry are learning; shortcuts to operational risk and safety are not beneficial in any way. The company can lose employees, money and reputation, all of which individually and collectively can severely damage a business.