Dialogue is also maintained through employee surveys. Many VINCI Construction entities have made the decision to investigate employee perceptions of the safety climate on a regular basis. Subcontractors and temporary workers are encouraged to participate.
Engaging employees in everyday prevention through reporting and alert procedures
The joint declaration emphasises that any situation observed by employees that represents an imminent threat to health and safety must be immediately reported to the relevant superior and that no employee can be reprimanded for making such a report. Likewise, depending on the operational context, employees in any of the Group’s business lines or countries of operation can avail themselves of procedures such as exercising the right to refuse work, if they believe the situation presents a serious and imminent danger to their life or health. Employees are strongly encouraged by managers to raise alerts and report hazards. Business lines and divisions continue to develop and disseminate new digital applications to ease the reporting of hazardous situations and near misses and facilitate the processing and sharing of this information.
In addition to MoveSafe, a mobile application for the reporting of dangerous situations and near misses, VINCI Autoroutes has developed and launched Jarvis. This new application helps to maintain records of 15 minute prevention sessions; record and report on prevention inspections; and keep product safety data sheets available at all times.
At VINCI Energies, the Safety Up application, which is available in 10 languages and has been downloaded by more than 19,700 employees, can be used to report hazardous situations as well as share best practices and news flashes. The application was designed as an awareness raising tool and is co managed centrally and by companies, with the close involvement of managers, to encourage local communication and use within companies. It is the most frequently downloaded application for use in the field at VINCI Energies.
At VINCI Construction, smartphone applications like e-Care 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 events with a high potential risk, 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.
Continuous on-the-ground training of employees
Each activity has its own toolbox of measures and integrates health and safety awareness into its daily routines, such as pre start and pre task meetings, 15 minute safety sessions and stop cards. Initiatives such as these have been rolled out by most businesses and offer daily opportunities to review basic safety rules, explain operating procedures, introduce the work environment and engage all employees, including temporary workers and subcontractors’ staff. Health and safety specialists coordinate these initiatives with effective support from worksite and operating site managers. 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. This has been followed by feedback sessions with workers, managers and outside staff to share the lessons learned from the experience. VINCI Construction has 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 2023 were devoted to health and safety, totalling more than 2.6 million hours
In addition to daily on-site training, the Group continues to make online content available to employees at any time, via its e-learning platform Up!. In 2023, employees had access to more than 1,050 training resources in risk prevention and health and safety (910 in 2022), which accounts for 6% of the full catalogue. The business lines’ training centres deliver technical and practical professional development in line with their fields of expertise. Group companies work with professional associations, training centres and secondary schools and higher education establishments specifically to incorporate safety issues into occupational training.
