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40 Reviews
Corporate Responsibility Review
Continued
Our communities
We are passionate about contributing to
the communities in which we operate and
engaging our people to join together to
make a difference where it matters.
Making a difference
During the year we launched a new charity
policy. Traditionally, we have written cheques
to charities which have had little benefit to
engaging either staff, shareholders or the
charities we have supported. The new policy
moved towards supporting charities in
two ways.
Firstly by supporting our people in their
own communities around the world through
local charitable donations, fundraising,
volunteering activities and sports and social
events. We have actively encouraged
offices to come together to organise and
take part in a variety of sponsored events
for charities and good causes. The Group
offered support via a newly formed network
of house managers who help to co-ordinate
and promote activity.
Secondly by providing pro bono consultancy
advice. Atkins people possess a multitude
of skills and experience which can benefit
international relief and aid organisations
and by giving pro bono consultancy advice,
rather than offering volunteers or cash
donations, we contribute our skills and at
the same time learn from our experiences.
16 universities in the UK, 12 in the USA,
two in China, two in Singapore and one
in Dubai.
We are working with Transport for
London and New Civil Engineer journal
to produce resource materials for schools
to excite youngsters about a career in
design and engineering.
Atkins has also developed a course with
an external provider specifically to raise the
awareness of health and safety risks for
students working overseas. The first course
was delivered in October 2007 at Cambridge
University. We will continue to sponsor this
and intend to run two courses per year.
Our performance
This section reports on Atkins’ corporate
responsibility performance during the year.
One of the objectives for our operations
during the year was the development of
a toolkit for house managers responsible
for Atkins offices worldwide. This provides
guidance about their responsibilities and
advice about how continually to improve
office performance such as waste, energy,
travel and wellbeing. An office database
has also been developed to capture this
information. It was introduced in the UK
during the year and we intend to expand
it to cover all operations in 2008.
Health and safety
Our accident performance for last year is
well within the Accident Incidence Rate
(AIR) benchmarks set by Atkins. The
benchmarks were 154 for office, 375 for
engineering and 1,701 for construction
activities. For the year for staff there was
an increase in AIR for office from 12 to 38,
engineering from 65 to 178 and construction
activities from 995 to 1,042 compared to
last year. However, the overall trend over
the last four years is still decreasing and
is better than industry performance as
compiled by the HSE Labour Force Survey.
Atkins continues to set its own challenging
targets with a 5% reduction for office,
and 15% reduction for engineering and
construction activities from last year’s
benchmarks. We also actively encourage
the reporting of incidents and near misses.
As a result, reported incidents and near
misses have doubled to 756, which is a
positive step towards accident prevention.
Engaging with education
We are actively engaged in a range of
educational initiatives from sponsorships
of university chairs to mentoring 14 to
16-year-olds and teaching primary school
children about energy efficiency.
During the year, our engagement with
universities has become more focused and
strategic through our University Liaison
Directors (ULDs) programme. We are
building relationships at multiple levels,
with the objective of being regarded as
an industrial partner of choice. Our ULDs
have developed ongoing relationships with
Accident Incident Rate (AIR) Office Engineering Construction
Benchmark 154 375 1,701
Staff
07/08 38 178 1,042
06/07 12 65 995
05/06 104 151 556
04/05 59 235 2,763
Contractors
07/08 0 0 708
06/07 382 441 1,221
05/06 0 124 293
04/05 0 124 317
(AIR = number of accidents per 100,000 staff or contractors).
WS Atkins plc Annual Report 2008