Health and safety

Jersey Electricity is committed to delivering a sustainable world class performance through the prevention of injury and ill health. Our Health and Safety strategy exists to deliver our commitment to a safe working environment, healthy employees, and an above and beyond approach to the welfare of those who we impact.

By their nature our Energy business and activities pose Health and Safety risks that must be properly managed. Our strategy is for flexibility in the implementation of Health and Safety and considerations on a risk based priority to meet changing needs. Our continuous improvement approach ensures we do not become complacent.

In 2010 we instigated a British Safety Council (BSC) audit to provide assurance regarding the existing Health and Safety work that underpinned our strategy and to give further direction for improvement, we were awarded Four Stars. We enhanced our operational work in response to BSC recommendations enabling us to achieve a BSC Five Star rating in 2012. And in December 2013 Jersey Electricity was one of only 68 companies worldwide to be awarded the BSC’s prestigious Sword of Honour in recognition of excellence in the management of Health and Safety and demonstrating a culture that exemplified best practice from shop floor to the boardroom.

We conduct our operations using Health and Safety management systems which reflect best practice, and we continuously strive to improve our performance and our management of Health and Safety. Each year we produce a Health and Safety plan that identifies our aims for the next 12 months and determines how it will fit in with our overall business objectives.

We use the accident reports of UK Trade Associations applicable to our business to identify possibly unknown hazards/risks in our business and take action to ensure such incidents do not happen in JE. That is, we take every opportunity to learn from the mistake of others.

Our culture is to ensure all our staff are more than competent in the job they do by offering focused and often nationally recognised training, complemented by supervised on-job experience. All employees are expected to recognise their own limits of competency and apply that to the flexible work culture in Jersey Electricity. They are also expected to identify hazards and take action to mitigate those hazards so that the risk of injury or damage from accidents is removed completely. Help is always on hand from the in-house Health Safetyand Environment team to support hazard identification and risk mitigation.

The team works with Senior Management to develop strategies for addressing issues in a timely manner. The Health and Safety Representatives are appointed ‘champions’ within their own operational teams and fulfil a crucial role in helping create the conditions and culture for safe working among all staff, contractors and members of the public. Maintaining the Health and Safety of all staff is highly relevant to delivering security and reliability of supply to our customers.