Yodel picks up UK health and safety award

UK package delivery company Yodel has been presented with a Gold Award for its occupational health and safety by the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA). The award, bestowed on Yodel for the second time, was presented in recognition of the high standards of health and safety management in Yodel’s sorting centres and at transport subsidiary Yodel Transport.

The two departments are responsible for the collection, sorting and distributing of parcels between Yodel’s national sort and local service centres.

Yodel said its rate of reportable incidents reduced “significantly” year-on-year since 2009, including a 76% fall in the accident incident rate from 2010 to 2011.

The Hatfield-based company said it achieved the improvement partly thanks to health and safety policy enforcement, risk assessment, training and monitoring measures.

Gerry Prior, senior divisional HS&E manager at Yodel Transport, Sorts & XL (right) receiving the Gold Award from Michael Hampson, RoSPA vice chairman of trustees

“Receiving this prestigious accolade from RoSPA for our approach to health and safety management is a great honour and indicates our rigorous attention to detail,” said Marija Simovic, Yodel’s chief operating officer.

“Ensuring the safety of our workforce and the public is paramount and it is a priority for us to maintain such high standards.”

RoSPA, which is well known in the UK particularly for road safety campaigns, has run its Occupational Health and Safety Awards scheme since 1956, open to businesses and organisations of all types and sizes from the UK and overseas.

The Awards judges companies against certain criteria, making them at merit, bronze, silver and gold levels.

David Rawlins, awards manager at RoSPA, said: “We congratulate Yodel on its success and encourage it, and all our other winners, to remain committed to safety and health, and approach that is well recognised to be good for workers and the bottom line.”