From October 4 to 8, Colas is organizing an annual event called “Safety Week”, designed to increase awareness and provide information on health and safety issues to its 55,000 employees. Safety Week is held throughout the Group’s global network, involving teams at each of Colas’ 800 construction units and 3,000 materials units in 50 countries.

Every day, on every Colas site, employees work hard to stay safe, and Safety Week is an opportunity to expand upon their ongoing efforts. The objective? To remind Colas teams of the importance of fostering an individual and collective commitment to safety and health, with a single objective: zero accidents.

Building a shared global health and safety culture to protect its employees and other stakeholders is one of Colas’ eight CSR commitments.

During last year’s Safety Week, Colas launched an awareness campaign featuring a new series of Groupwide safety rules, an essential step on the way to building a shared safety and health culture worldwide.

Since then, poster and video campaigns, special brochures for Managers and Workers, safety meeting forms, and a digital booklet called Fit for Travel have been made available to employees around the world.

In addition to Colas Safety Week, the Group promotes approaches from around the world such as One Colas Safety and Goal Zero that aim at putting employees in charge of their own Safety, and that of their colleagues, by helping them understand risks and learn safe behavior through training provided by coaches and in-house teams. After the Goal Zero program was launched in North America, One Colas Safety was rolled out two years ago, across road companies in mainland France, and is currently being deployed in Reunion Island, Switzerland, Belgium, in other countries in Europe and in Africa as well as at the Group’s Railway specialist, Colas Rail.

Lastly, as Covid-19 has left a mark on the last two years, health is more than ever at the forefront. This is why "Safety Week" will also cover health issues such as cardiovascular disease, stress and addictions. Efforts to prevent these risks are ongoing at a Group level, with special training and awareness raising. For example, 40% of employees groupwide have already been trained in workplace first aid procedures.

"At Colas, our aim is to be a benchmark in terms of health and safety across our business segments. Our approach - based on compliance with shared Groupwide safety rules - is ambitious. These rules must be applied at every Colas location around the world. By building a shared safety culture, we can make significant headway. Employees have to be responsible, vigilant, and to protect themselves and others." underlines Frédéric Gardès, Chairman and CEO of Colas.