At VINCI Construction, smartphone applications like Watch and Notify make it easy for any employee to report a hazardous situation or a best practice observed at a worksite. These apps are interfaced with internal incident management and reporting systems, which ensures the traceability, reliability and dissemination of the information. They make life easier for users and enable companies to implement appropriate measures to reduce their major risks. The most frequently occurring situations are analysed to identify corrective actions to be taken. Likewise, for all potentially serious incidents, the underlying causes are systematically investigated.
Discussion sessions with employees are regularly held to obtain their input on accident analysis and the measures that should be introduced, and also to keep them informed of accident investigations and the corrective action that was taken to prevent similar situations from happening again. Suggestion boxes are frequently set up at worksites and in companies to encourage all workers to speak up freely, regardless of their employment status, report any difficulties encountered and propose their own ideas.
Each business has its own toolbox of measures and integrates health and safety awareness into its daily routines, such as pre-start and pre-task briefings, 15-minute safety sessions and stop cards. Initiatives such as these have been rolled out by most of VINCI’s businesses and offer daily opportunities to review basic safety rules, explain operating procedures, introduce the work environment and involve employees, temporary workers and subcontractors. These initiatives are coordinated by health, safety and environment (HSE) officers with visible support and commitment from the managers of the worksite or operating site. Many awareness-raising and training sessions focus on issues specific to each activity, such as working at height, driving vehicles or hand injury risks.
Innovation is a core component of training, to continuously improve its effectiveness and adapt it to changing activities. For example, some businesses use virtual reality simulation training. 4D visualisation has been employed to re-enact accidents and potentially serious incidents and better analyse the root causes. It was followed by feedback sessions with workers, managers and outside staff to share the lessons learned from the experience. VINCI Construction developed Alive on Site, a tool used to film employees, with their consent, as they perform a job and view the images later with the team in charge to detect risky behaviours and best practices. This session is facilitated by a safety instructor, most often from outside the worksite, to encourage open sharing and discussion. The aim of these on-the-ground analyses is to encourage participants to share their points of view and heighten their awareness of risks, both individually and as a group. Special attention is paid to the training of new employees and lesser skilled workers, for whom accident rates are often higher.
44 %of training hours in 2022 devoted to health and safety, totalling more than 2.5 million hours
In addition to daily on-site training of employees, the Group continues to make online content available at any time, via its e-learning platform Up!. In 2022, employees had access to more than 910 training resources in risk prevention and health and safety (650 in 2021), which accounts for 7% of the full catalogue. The business lines’ training centres deliver business-oriented technical and practical training. Group companies work with professional associations and with secondary and higher education schools and training centres, specifically to incorporate safety issues into occupational training.
Managers and executives undergo dedicated training to reinforce the safety culture in leadership and foster leadership accountability for health and safety performance. Worksite visits by managers are a well-established practice; all companies across the Group arrange these on a regular basis. Health and safety are an agenda item of management committee meetings at every business line, division and company. Managers’ performance is increasingly assessed against criteria linked to the results of health and safety measures and their demonstrated involvement in promoting prevention initiatives.
For example, at VINCI Construction, the “Managing Safety” programme promotes five essential actions, the first of which is to assess managers’ safety culture prior to their annual performance review. The programme addresses the organisational and human factors in accident prevention. It aims to help entity managers to develop a just culture and to better prevent accidents by understanding their root causes. At VINCI Concessions, training for managers is the second of the five pillars of its safety culture. All managers must be trained in prevention basics to ensure that they incorporate these rules into the organisation of work. A new e-learning module for managers was launched in 2022. Managers are also expected to proactively manage health and safety through actions ranging from carrying out safety inspections to interviewing injured workers and responding to surveys. At VINCI Energies, a new “Safety Excellence” course was added to the VINCI Energies Academy catalogue of basic training. Many courses – such as those for operational directors, business Unit managers, project directors, project managers and worksite managers – were updated to incorporate the core “Safety Excellence” messages.
Safety incentives, rewarding employees for achieving safety goals, are implemented at the Group’s highest level of leadership. For example, the short-term variable remuneration of VINCI’s Chairman and Chief Executive Officer is linked to environmental, social and governance (ESG) criteria, which include health and safety indicators. The Board of Directors’ Remuneration Committee defines and assesses these criteria.
