Corporate Responsibility Report 2010

Health, safety and wellbeing

Land Securities is committed to providing a safe and healthy working environment for all employees. In line with all relevant legislation, we also take all reasonable measures to secure the safety and wellbeing of contractors, service partners, occupiers and members of the public who may visit our buildings or be materially affected by our activities.

Health and safety management

Health and safety teams in each of our London and Retail Portfolios are responsible for providing best practice guidance for our business throughout the UK. The teams also undertake property health checks to monitor compliance both with our own procedures and our statutory obligations, and provide specialist knowledge on issues such as asbestos, fire safety and accessibility issues related to the Disability Discrimination Act. The London team is also responsible for assisting line managers within our head office in managing the health, safety and welfare of our office-based employees.

Through adherence to such systems and processes, we scored 8.0 and were placed 26th in the Health & Safety Executive's Corporate Health and Safety Performance Index (CHaSPI) in 2010. We will continue to benchmark our performance against the other UK companies in the Index, and seek to achieve a position within the top 10%.

To remind all employees of the importance of identifying and managing risks at work, we have held a health and safety week, and run e-learning courses on Personal Health and Safety for all employees and Managing Health and Safety for line managers. Since we began reporting on health and safety, we have won five Gold Awards for occupational health and safety from the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA).

Fire safety

Along with others with fire management responsibilities, including architects, enforcers and property management experts, we attended the BSI fire safety management standards seminar last year. We argued the case for improving partnerships with fire management enforcers and tenants, and put forward our approach for managing fire risk within our business.

Employee wellbeing

We encourage our people to live healthier lives, and through our wellbeing policy and programme, offer a range of initiatives to help them to get fit, stay healthy, eat well and manage stress.

All our employees can undertake a health assessment through BUPA Positive Health. The confidential online service provides access to health tips from BUPA experts, and focuses on four key areas of health and wellbeing: nutrition, fitness, sleep and stress.

We have also appointed Unum LifeWorks to provide an Employee Assistance Programme. This confidential and impartial advice service, also available to all employees, provides support on:

• health and wellbeing issues
• practical help regarding childcare, parenting and education
• financial and legal issues
• a wide range of work-related issues
• emotional wellbeing, including anxiety and depression, stress, bereavement and relationships.

To reinforce our commitment, we also provide regular Wellbeing updates on our company intranet containing healthy recipe ideas, hints and tips from colleagues, and links to further information on health-related topics.