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Workforce safety and health
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What is Workforce safety and health at AstraZeneca?
We work to provide a safe and healthy working environment, based on a culture of learning rather than blame. This includes the application of human and operational performance principles, including training for leaders and managers, supporting employee health through flexible ways of working, access to disease prevention, treatment and mental health services.
Our approach
To continue to deliver medicines to patients, we must foster an environment where people feel safe, energised and inspired. The resources we put into supporting the physical and mental health and safety of our workforce are an investment in society at large, the communities where we operate and their long-term economic health.
Through our Global Standards we are committed to maintaining or exceeding compliance with all local company, legal and regulatory requirements. Our Safety, Health and Environment (SHE) Standard is covered by our Code of Ethics and supported by our OneSHE Framework and accompanying ‘SHE: Everybody’s Business’ training, which establishes minimum standards and is applicable to all employees, temporary staff and contractors across AstraZeneca sites and all business areas and functions.
We work with regulators, vendors, and our own Legal function to ensure we maintain compliance within the various local regulatory frameworks that apply. We manage SHE risks, opportunities, and performance by using effective management systems utilising a ‘Plan, Do, Check, Act’ process to ensure continuous improvement. This requires engagement throughout the organisation, effective leadership, open communication, and a commitment from every employee to themselves, our colleagues, our workplace, our community and our environment.
Our AZ SHE System provides a single, transparent source of SHE data across our enterprise. This drives innovation in the management and reporting of SHE events and sustainability metrics. By collecting data from 504 locations and 81 countries on SHE events (including near misses), SHE observations and SHE inspections in one system, we have quick notification of and response to events, and we can trend our safety, health, and environmental performance. This further enables us to ensure safety and health initiatives are focused on the right areas and implement corrective and preventive action plans.