Health, safety and well-being

Good health and safety practice is a responsibility that we share with each and every employee. Ultimate responsibility for health and safety issues resides with each of the managing directors of each of the Maisons. It is the responsibility of each business to set policies and procedures based on guidance from the relevant regulatory body. Where relevant these policies are supported by codes of conduct such as for the handling of controlled chemicals. Each business has individuals responsible for health and safety issues either as a dedicated role or for smaller businesses as part of a wider remit.

For our workshops, offices and shops, the risk of serious injury is limited. This year, in addition to regular reviews that our Maisons may commission, we instituted a thorough ongoing review of health and safety practices at over 20 of our manufacturing sites using an external consultancy. We focused on our manufacturing sites as having the greatest range of health and safety issues to address. This review assessed compliance with both health and safety regulations together with the effectiveness of translating policy into operating procedure and practice. This review was designed to support individual sites to share good practice and on practical easy to implement programmes to further raise standards.

As responsibility for health and safety management has been devolved to individual Maisons, many different systems for data collection have developed suited to national reporting requirements. In 2007/08, we will work towards establishing group indicators of health and safety performance to help us further improve in this area.

Case Study: Montblanc

Headquartered in Hamburg, Montblanc is a diversified group manufacturing timeless luxury products, like writing instruments, leather goods, watches and jewellery. The company employs around 2 400 people worldwide. Of these, 800 are based in Hamburg which is the main manufacturing centre for writing instruments and exclusive limited edition products. Over the last few years, the company approach to health and safety has been completely reviewed. The review process included a revised set of policies and guidelines, an internal communication programme, extensive hands-on training sessions, and a new strategy to assess risk, provide access to occupational health specialists and to measuring performance. As a result, Montblanc’s rate of workplace accidents at 0,01% is significantly below industry standards. Montblanc is regularly audited by local authorities, and its approach has been recognised as best practice by the German Health & Safety regulator.

Case Study: Cartier

Health and safety is a top priority for Cartier. The company already follows high standards in terms of the equipment it uses and the quality of the work environment it provides.

This year, the company has gone further in commissioning a holistic ergonomic review in its jewellery polishing departments. The aim of the project was to work with the in-house team to fully map the activities of the polishers and to evaluate opportunities for improvement in areas such as noise, air quality, posture or repetitive tasks. An external specialist consultancy carried out detailed on-site observations and analysed over 12 hours of film. The findings have been shared with the polishing departments and Cartier has established a work group facilitated by the external consultancy to identify and create innovative solutions to the issues raised. One ongoing project is to design the ideal fully equipped workstation (bench and chair) for a polisher. On completion, Cartier intends to share the findings with its suppliers and others to help raise standards across the industry. The intention is to extend this type of holistic approach to other trades within Cartier through a rolling programme of working practice review.