Our approach
Our global commitment states that “Nothing is more important to us than the safety, health and wellbeing of our customers, communities, employees, and partners. We have a simple global commitment: no one gets hurt.”
The statement is signed on behalf of our Board by our Group CEO.
Our SHW Framework Policy
Our SHW Framework Policy provides a consistent approach to safety leadership, planning, performance monitoring, governance, and assurance. It is accompanied by suite of global standards setting out minimum standards that must be followed everywhere Vodafone operates. They are supported by local procedures and guidance to ensure we meet local legal requirements.
Our Code of Conduct
Our Code of Conduct makes it clear that everyone working for or on behalf of Vodafone must behave in a safe and responsible manner at all times.
Every Vodafone employee or contractor and our partner’s employees and contractors must:
- Abide by the Absolute Rules at all times;
- Intervene if they see someone behaving in an unsafe manner;
- Consider how their decisions and actions will affect the health and safety of others; and
- Never compromise health and safety.
Our global Code of Conduct training includes a mandatory e-learning safety module designed to ensure that employees know how to keep themselves and others safe at work. It also includes details of our Speak Up programme that enables anyone to report safety concerns anonymously if they prefer.
Leadership
We expect our senior leaders to demonstrate personal leadership in safety health and wellbeing (SHW), this is achieved by:
Setting high and visible standards for SHW, and continuously challenging others to do the same;
Building and sustaining an authentic, preventative, and caring safety culture;
Empowering and encouraging their teams to take ownership;
Being well informed about safety risks, expected controls and ensuring open communication with their teams around best practice; and
Creating a safe space to allow people to speak up with any suggestions or concerns.
Our Group and Operating Company Executive Committees provide visible and clear leadership in SHW. These senior leaders are actively involved and carry out regular face-to-face safety engagement throughout the year. Our leaders recognise the importance of connecting with teams and front-line workers whether maintaining our networks, working in our retail stores or on customer sites. We encourage anyone to raise any concerns or ideas for improvements in SHW and guarantee the support of our leaders when they do so.
We mandate our ‘Leading for Health & Safety at Work’ e-learning module. The training module provides personal experiences, views, and advice from some of our global senior leaders.
Our Partner SHW Policy
Our Partner SHW Policy sets out additional safety requirements for our partners in our supply chain, particularly for high-risk activities. The policy emphasises the need for partners to monitor compliance with safe working practices on a continuous basis, report about their safety performance to us and have in place robust mechanisms to manage safety in their own supply chain. It also requires partners to put in place a safety plan before they undertake specified high-risk activities.
Vodafone is also a member of the Joint Alliance for CSR (JAC), which amongst many topics has a focus on assessing and raising standards in the supply chain of the telecommunications industry. JAC performs collective audits of common partners to our industry and focuses on areas such as safety and health conditions in the upstream operations and factories in the supply chain.
Governance
SHW is managed through a Global Framework Policy and suite of Global Standards, which includes the monitoring and assessing of risks, setting targets, reviewing progress, and reporting performance. Our global framework is based on international standards for occupational health and safety. It is aligned to internationally recognised best practice, and always meets or exceeds local requirements. In addition, the majority of our local markets have chosen to undergo independent external certification to ISO 45001, the international standard for occupational health and safety.
All incidents relating to key risks and breaches of the Vodafone Absolute Rules are reported and investigated in adherence with timescales contained within our Incident Reporting Standard. We ensure that incidents are investigated in accordance with their severity, and appropriate remedial actions and improvements are identified and implemented. We strongly believe in the importance of prevention; however, we also believe that every incident should be treated as an opportunity for learning, improvement and action.
SHW is a global policy and is included within our global risk and compliance governance programme. This includes in-country face to face audits as well as remote validation as a complementary process. Our audits focus on the pre-selected key risks each year as well as additional topics identified during the year as a result of trends. These governance activities are complemented by informal engagement and communication events which typically include team meetings, site visits with contractors and partners and verification checks of actions taken following any serious incidents.