A first for the sector: Aramark UK’s journey to the Sir George Earle Trophy  

Aramark UK made history in 2025 by becoming the first organisation from the Hotel and Catering sector to win the prestigious Sir George Earle Trophy at the RoSPA Health and Safety Awards. 

Predominantly a food service organisation, Aramark UK also carries out soft facilities management activities such as cleaning and reception duties to over a 1,000 client sites across the UK. It provides services in areas such as the Armed Forces, Government buildings, HM Prisons, education, healthcare, workplaces, sports and entertainment and employs over 13,000 staff.

The company was awarded the highest accolade at the 2025 RoSPA Awards after demonstrating an outstanding approach to the management of workplace safety, characterised by a positive and supportive health and safety culture that was built on dynamic and engaging communication, and their approach to fostering strong employee and client engagement, around shared health, safety, and wellbeing goals.

We talked to Aramark’s Safety Director UK, Fran Collison, about what the RoSPA Awards mean to them.

Why do you enter the RoSPA Awards?

“We have been entering the Awards for several years as we believe it is important to challenge ourselves as a business and benchmark our health and safety performance against other reputable businesses.

“As a safety team we set an annual objective to achieve at least a Gold Award, making our participation both a strategic goal and a source of motivation. The awards process encourages us to reflect on our progress, celebrate our achievements and inspire ourselves improve further. 

“It is also great external recognition, demonstrating our commitment to safety and reinforcing our strong safety culture. The award emphasises us as leaders within our industry and strengthens trust with existing clients and customers but also supports our efforts to attract and win new business.

“The feedback from RoSPA is valuable for our continuous improvement. Each year we review the feedback use it to improve our practices.”

What are the main health and safety challenges at your organisation and how do you manage them?

“With our business on a growth trajectory, ensuring consistent safety standards at each of our locations is key. We operate with a highly diverse workforce ranging from 16 to 80-years-old, and in some sectors, our teams are seasonal and transient. Operations span from food and beverage services to cleaning and even the management of equine waste for military horses in London. We constantly strive to adapt to the needs of the business and our workforce in all our sectors ensuring that safety remains a constant priority.

“We manage food safety and occupational safety which brings its own unique challenges. In recent years, the increasing number of customers with food allergies has added a layer of complexity to our operations, requiring constant vigilance.

“As a contractor we essentially operate in other businesses premises, so ensuring we have the tools to balance our requirements with those of our clients is key. This can be particularly challenging in environments ranging from brand new state of the art facilities to old, listed properties including castles!

“We are a relatively small safety team over a large geographical area. This has challenged us to work smarter in communication without the need to spend the majority of time travelling the country. It has been essential to drive the message to all that health and safety isn’t just the responsibility of the Safety Team, but something owned by everyone. 

“My role as the Safety Director, sitting on the Executive Leadership team, is essentially developing, implementing and overseeing safety programmes and ensuring legal compliance for the organisation. I firmly believe that relationships are 95 per cent of my role, being able to influence our teams to think safety first is my absolute goal.”

Can you share some key strategies or practices that contributed to your success at the RoSPA Awards?

“We have been very keen to ensure our safety culture is one where all employees are highly encouraged to speak up about all aspects of safety. But most importantly having a safety team that is approachable, knowledgeable and accessible 365 days of the year.

“As a positive out of the pandemic we set up a simple communication called the Safety Surgery, where we communicate and answer questions on a daily basis. This includes a weekly call where we cascade safety information, tools and reminders using a Teams call. With this comes a chat facility that our frontline teams use all the time to check and ask safety-related questions. This has massively improved safety communication at all levels of the organisation, enabling us to share weekly updates on safety, best practice, learnings from incidents and celebrating success which engages the whole business.

“We have also worked hard to ensure our safety systems are modern, accessible and simple so that frontline users can get on with their day without onerous procedures. An example of this is using QR codes for reporting, so our teams can use their phones in situ to do checks, report incidents and a range of other activities.”

How did you find the process of entering the Awards?

“We are relatively experienced in entering the Awards and in preparation we gather evidence all year round. The submission does take time to write, and we ensure that we use the best examples to demonstrate how our business approaches safety. We always ask our frontline teams to support the process.

“It was a completely new and somewhat nerve-wracking process to go through the final stage of the Sir George Earle Trophy. As part of this, we decided a site visit should feature our teams and it was really enjoyable to be able to show the judges what we do in our day-to-day operations. When it came to the judging panel, we had thoroughly prepared a presentation and focused on selling ourselves.”

How did it feel to win?

“It was incredible to receive the news that we had won the Hotel and Catering Sector Award but when we realised that we had also been shortlisted for the Sir George Earle Trophy it was a real wow moment. We had no idea we would actually go on to win it. I know there were a few tears shed with the sheer pride of winning the very top RoSPA Award and being from a sector that had never won the trophy in the 69 years that the Awards have been running.

“It has been so motivating for the business and the pride felt by all that our hard work has been recognised externally. It has confirmed that what we do daily is making a real impact to ensuring our clients, customers and teams are in a safe environment.”

What effects do you think winning the Award will have on the organisation going forward?

“Winning both the Hotel and Catering Sector Award and then the Sir George Earle Trophy is momentous for Aramark as an organisation. Being the first Hotel and Catering sector winner to go on to win the highest accolade is huge. It has already boosted morale and strengthened our credibility with clients. It gives us recognition to know we are leading the way in safety across all industries. We hope that the win will attract new business and of course retain current business. 

“Most importantly we are really excited about the legacy we can create with RoSPA after winning the Sir George Earle Trophy. Getting to share some of our approach to safety being beneficial to other businesses as we all work towards a safer world is incredibly rewarding.”

If you’re serious about safety, there’s no better way to benchmark your progress and celebrate your team’s efforts than by entering the RoSPA Awards. Visit: www.rospa.com/awards