Customer website

Home > Corporate responsibility > Social

Social

We place our people right at the heart of our business and are committed to promoting their learning and development, health, well-being and ethical pursuits. We provide a healthy and safe environment for our people, customers, suppliers and contractors.

Safestore and our people

Policy statement

We place our people right at the heart of our business and are committed to promoting their learning and development, health, well-being and ethical pursuits. We provide a healthy and safe environment for our people, customers, suppliers and contractors. Safestore always complies with current legislation and endeavours to continuously exceed legal requirements and local regulations by:

Health and safety

— conducting regular health and safety reviews across our estate inclusive of
    the review of risk assessments and accident reports to identify, control,
    prevent and nullify potential risks;

— ensuring our health and safety committee meets regularly to review issues,
    process, policy and actions harnessing a culture where health and safety
    always sits high on our agenda; and – delivering accredited health and safety
    training and refresher training relevant to job role as standard to all employees.

Equality and diversity

— being an equal opportunities employer that maintains a workforce that
    reflects the uniqueness of the communities in which we operate;

— ensuring policies and practices are in place that treat all employees fairly and
    equally. All employees receive the same treatment regardless of their ethnic
    origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, religion or belief, or disability;

— continuing to nurture the talents of our people and the benefit they bring to
    our varying business functions through a clearly defined and transparent
    competency framework;

— honing a culture of fair treatment regarding recruitment and promotion,
    making decisions solely based on ability, aptitude and role requirements as
    outlined in our competency framework; and

— maintaining an active succession planning strategy that considers the ability
    of internal employees before recruiting externally.

Work-life balance

— delivering through our employee engagement programme support to our
    people in achieving a healthy work-life balance;

— providing a range of initiatives that celebrate the cultural diversity of our
    employees including: graduate internships, an apprenticeship scheme
    developed in association with Street League, a tax free cycle to work scheme
    and "Busy Bees" child support;

— encouraging our staff to engage in our accredited Careerstore training and
    development programme providing them with individual training and a tailored
    development path; and

— engaging in programmes that encourage our people to self learn and develop
    with funding for professional qualifications.

Highlights

— UK country representative at the European Business Awards 2010.
    Subsequently, we went on to be awarded a prestigious Ruban d’Honneur as
    overall country winners in the "Employer of the Year" category. This placed us
    alongside organisations such as Procter and Gamble and Kellogg’s in
    recognition of our business’ success, innovation and business ethics over the
    past twelve months.

— As an "Investors in People" organisation we diligently align the needs of
    our teams, their people and their aspirations to the broader needs of our
    business. This leads to a truly engaged workforce throughout our estate that is
    passionate about the delivery of our strategic plan and underlying objectives.

— Our intern programme attracted a wide range of applicants and has provided
    selected graduates with valuable business experience in key departments.
    Despite the economic climate we continue to pay our interns and are
    delighted that the success of this scheme has led to a 100% appointment rate
    into key roles within our business during 2010.

— We were pleased to receive the Payroll Giving Bronze Award for the third
    year running. This symbol of excellence is awarded to employers who have
    success in generating sustainable income sources for UK charities for payroll
    giving.

— The year saw us partner with Street League, a charity committed to the
    delivery of football and education programmes to some of the most
    disadvantaged young people across the UK. This involved the introduction of
    an innovative work place apprenticeship scheme. The scheme directly
    supported disadvantaged young people in gaining valuable work experience,
    many of whom are from NEET (not in education, employment or training)
    groups.