In the last of Olivia’s blogs during her work experience, she met with Pip Winstanley, Health and Safety Manager for Southern Co-op.

With over 20 years’ experience in health and safety, Pip is a keen believer in an open and honest health and safety culture. But can she capture colleagues’ imagination by making e-learning more direct and dynamic and making safety simple?

Pip has been with Southern Co-op for one year but has been in the health and safety business for just over 20 years! She has a wide range of knowledge and experience leading up to her current job here in Southern Co-op.

Meet the the team and what they do

The team includes two Safety & Health Environment Advisors – Jo Bickerstaffe and Hollie Harris and Tim Clifford-Jones as Health and Safety Compliance Co-ordinator who recently joined on a fixed term contract from one of our retail stores. The team’s work covers the whole of the business including head office, retail, and end of life services. As well as health and safety, they look after food safety management for the business, food safety policies and annual petrol station safety checks. Pip’s role also includes advising on any new/changes in legislation or codes of practice, managing health and safety and food safety policies and procedures, liaising with our Primary Authority for fire safety and managing audit programmes and accidents and incidents. The team is also working to shape mandatory safety and food safety e-learning for all colleagues for the future.

What the team are currently doing

Pip explained that this year they’ve just started working with end of life services to develop a health and safety management system and ensure there is consistency across the business on themes such as fire safety. The team has been reviewing its audit programme for the business to ensure it is risk based and provides usable feedback. The team is also building a new compliance portal and Tim is busy data cleansing and structuring our audit trackers for the year.

The team believes it is important to find different ways of doing things and are invested in making safety simple. The team is focusing on ensuring that colleagues understand why things must be done certain ways and that everyone is responsible for safety within the business. In addition, the team is working with the Academy/training team on making the e-learning bite size, engaging and ensuring the ‘whys’ and responsibilities are clear.

Pip’s biggest challenges

Ensuring the team is visible across the business as a point of contact for all things safety and food safety. The team aren’t just an auditing team, they educate, advise, and investigate, provide guidance and are the subject matter experts for safety and food safety. Their other biggest challenge is reducing the burden on colleagues with regards to managing safety on site but still ensuring they are legally compliant.

What Pip would like people to know.

Pip and her team are there to help colleagues go home the same as they arrived at work and to not feel that safety is a burden. It is incredibly important to have an open and honest health and safety culture within Southern Co-op.