How L’Oréal use the RoSPA Awards as part of their focus on safety

Company: L’Oréal
 

Malcolm Staves is Global Vice President of Health and Safety at L’Oréal. 

In 2017, and never satisfied with the status quo, Malcolm and his team were brainstorming ideas for creating a new level of engagement in health and safety among the 88,000 strong L’Oréal workforce located in more than 150 countries all over the globe. 

And then it hit them, because they realised that if they could get their employees to engage with health and safety outside of the workplace and in their homes where the stakes were higher, then this would undoubtedly have a positive impact on engagement in their L’Oréal workplaces.

Malcolm and L’Oréal soon realised that home safety needed specialist skills, so they set about finding a partner who could help them design a home safety programme for the company.  The search led them to UK-based RoSPA, with a 100-year history of effective public safety campaigns.  In 2018, the RoSPA – L’Oréal partnership was born, with a programme called Safe@Work-Safe@Home.  The campaign focused on the most at-risk group – children under the age of five – and went out to communities of L’Oréal employees all over the world. 

As the programme got underway, it began to instil a sense of pride in safety in L’Oréal employees, and Malcolm wanted to capitalise on it by looking for ways to celebrate these growing levels of employee engagement.   

Malcolm then decided they would enter the RoSPA Awards at corporate level, and to his surprise, they won Gold in their first year and the whole company celebrated.  In the years that followed, individual L’Oréal sites were encouraged to enter the awards, bringing them more motivation, more pride, and a healthy haul of Gold, Silver and Bronze Awards.

And employee pride has not been the only benefit of L’Oréal’s involvement in the RoSPA Awards. What has been particularly interesting has been the additional motivation created among the different sites in L’Oréal as they benchmarked themselves against the standards of an organisation like RoSPA with such a great reputation in the field.  As Malcolm explains: “Simply by entering the RoSPA Awards, the L’Oréal sites were already on a path to excellence.”

At last count, L’Oréal had a massive 70 sites entering the RoSPA Awards, representing approximately half of the L’Oréal workforce, and an incredible two wins of the ultimate RoSPA Award, the Sir George Earle Trophy, in a five-year period.   Health and safety have risen to the highest level of importance in the L’Oréal organisation, and thanks to the RoSPA partnership, the RoSPA Awards and the Safe@Work-Safe@Home programme, it has almost become an internal brand.

Reflecting on the future, Malcolm concludes: “Engagement in health and safety is a fundamental part of risk management, and once you find it, it is a game changer.  We will continue to work with RoSPA and their outstanding awards to raise standards not just at L’Oréal or in our industry, but across the world and out into the communities where it is needed most.”

November 2024

Interested in the RoSPA Health and Safety Awards?

Find out more about the RoSPA Health and Safety Awards, including top tips to make sure your entry is as good as possible. 

Find out more at: www.rospa.com/awards