Heineken’s global risk management challenges were put firmly on the map Tuesday afternoon when Reyes Gonzalez, global safety manager at Heineken International BV, outlined the company’s strategic priorities in Track C at the IOSH conference.
Setting the scene by exploring the evolution of safety in Heineken, she explained how the company has engaged its senior managers to drive occupational health and safety improvements across its global networks.
Ms Gonzalez highlighted in particular the work Heineken has done on road safety and pointed out that 26 per cent of all accidents occurred in its logistics and distribution where there are 42,000 employees on the road every day.
She demonstrated the global challenges by showing pictures of roads in locations as far flung as Egypt and Vietnam and the poor driving conditions that its employees face on a daily basis.
Ms Gonzalez explained how Heineken had run a series of safety leadership workshops and had used behavioural analysis to train 500 leaders in one year. She also highlighted the company’s dedicated road safety website and its new hazard perception evaluation video, which features localised content for over 70 countries.
In France, for example, Ms Gonzalez said that Heineken had reduced crashes by 60 per cent by installing mirrors strategically on delivery vehicles to remove blind spots for drivers when they reversed.
