Focused on supporting mental wellbeing across all our teams
Why It Matters
Nothing is more important to us than the health and safety of our teammates and the people we serve. We are committed to supporting our teammates so they always feel physically and mentally safe, helping them to be high performers and to deliver for our customers and communities.
Analyst Spotlight Our Approach
Our health, safety and wellness approach enables our business strategy and People Plan by protecting and empowering our greatest strength—our 131,000 teammates across Canada. We have a rigorous health and safety management system, which aligns with the standard CSA-Z1000.
In response to the past challenges of the pandemic—and as part of our ongoing commitment to continuously improve our performance—we focused on harmonizing our prevention programming, creating leaders’ buy-in for safety and we
In response to the past challenges of the pandemic—and as part of our ongoing commitment to continuously improve our performance—we focused on harmonizing our prevention programming, creating leaders’ buy-in for safety and we continued raising awareness regarding mental wellbeing programs in fiscal 2023.
continued raising awareness regarding mental wellbeing programs in fiscal 2023.
Ongoing work to enhance our safety program in fiscal 2023 included:
Enhancing our safety culture through strong relationships with business leaders, creating top-level accountability
Harmonizing policies and procedures, from regional to national programs
Leveraging analytics to drive prevention programming initiatives, leading to year-over-year improvements in our Total Incident Frequency rate and Lost Time Frequency rate
Reducing severity and providing more modified work opportunities when an employee is injured
We continued the implementation of our business-wide Mental Wellbeing Strategy, focusing on:
- Raising awareness of mental health challenges across all lines of business
- Reducing stigma around mental wellbeing in a measurable way
- Identifying and providing more tools and resources to support teammate wellbeing
- Developing key metrics to track the level of mental health issues, the utilization of resources and the impact our program is having with our employees
Key partners in helping to deliver our health and safety program include Blue Cross and Sun Life Canada, our main benefits providers. We also work closely with provincial bodies, including workers’ compensation boards, to shape our approach and preventative programming.
Highlights
Engaging Managers as Safety Leaders
We believe people leaders have an important role to play in reinforcing safety culture and processes in our business. In fiscal 2023 our team of safety specialists continued to work closely with management teams in lower-performing locations to identify opportunities for enhanced safety leadership and performance. This approach reinforced managing safety performance as an area of accountability for leaders and involved them in the creation and implementation of site-specific plans, drawing on local knowledge and experience to make our workplaces safer.
Implementing Corrective Findings and Actions Protocols
Our safety approach empowers our people to prevent incidents and to learn everything we can when something does go wrong so we can work to prevent similar events in future. Through regular inspections, audits and investigations, issues are identified that need to be addressed. These items are captured in our safety database and it is the responsibility of the location management team to action these within a given timeframe. Reports are generated tracking these items, ensuring they are completed on time, which reduces hazards and preventing future injuries.
Reducing Incidents and Injuries
In fiscal 2023 we continued to offer e-learning modules to help our grocery store teammates learn about how to avoid injuries through better ergonomics, proper lifting and consideration of repetitive motions. More than 95 per cent of cashier teammates completed the specific e-learning modules addressing new processes for scanning and bagging. A multi-departmental project team created and pilot tested a new checkstand design to reduce ergonomic risk factors for cashiers. This new design is now being implemented in new builds and major renovation projects. As a result of this work, cashier incidents have decreased by 27 per cent in fiscal 2023 and lost workdays due to injury decreased by more than 50 per cent compared to the previous year.
Champions
I enjoy interacting with different teammates across our business to learn their perspectives on health and safety and how I can provide support. The different perspectives push me to think outside of the box and come up with ideas on how we can improve workplace safety.”
Francis Garcia, National Health and Safety Manager, Sobeys
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About how we’re improving community health and wellbeing.
As a family nurturing families, we want to ensure Canadians are taken care of today, tomorrow and in the future. By doing OurPart™ for the environment, we hope to inspire our customers to do theirs. Every step we take together—big or small—can make a difference.
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