Health and safety

We’ve got over 12,000 employees and we need to keep them all safe at work. We have always invested in developing, implementing and improving safe systems of work, and this continues. We continue to hold ISO 45001 health and safety management certification across our UK and

Our focus on the next leg of our journey is to strengthen this with an increased emphasis on a safety culture where we support and empower employees to share our aims.

The Howdens culture is committed to safety, and encourages all employees to feel empowered to take responsibility for themselves and their team.

We continue to work with other leading companies and external consultants to share best practice, to help us benchmark and to learn and challenge ourselves. We hope that these actions will improve our safety record even further in the future.

In 2023, our safety KPI remained low at 153 RIDDOR reportable injuries per 100,000 employees. This is 29% below the 2022/2023 HSE All-Industry rate of 215. Our accident severity rate has also remained low at 33.4 hours lost to accidents per 100,000 hours worked.

Our network of over 850 depots in the UK and Republic of Ireland was awarded the ISO 45001 certification in early 2022. This was achieved by implementing simple and visual safety management systems and actively encouraging the participation of all staff to help continuously improve Health & Safety (H&S) performance. We had already held ISO 45001 certification across our manufacturing and distribution network since 2009.

We have developed our construction-based H&S systems for our Solid Work Surface Installations and Contracts operations, which are rapidly expanding areas of growth.

Across the business we continue to work hard to embed the cultural value that safe operations is our way of doing things. In 2023, we introduced H&S recognition initiatives, such as the ‘Safety Good Spot’ and ‘Local Safety Hero’ Awards, celebrating the positive impacts of employee participation and proactive behaviour.

To maintain momentum on our safety culture improvement plan we have partnered with the Centre for Human Factors (CFHF) at the University of Hull. In 2024, the CFHF will be working with us to get a deeper understanding, through engagement, of the human factors and cultural elements that we can foster and, where necessary, improve on to embed and mature our safety culture.