How winning the top RoSPA Award boosted corporate social responsibility at EMCOR UK 

Company:

EMCOR UK

Achievement:

Sir George Earle Trophy winner in 2024.

Their story:

When the RoSPA Awards 2024 opportunity arose at the end of 2023, facilities management company EMCOR UK was already amid an internal safety evolution.  The first organisation globally to achieve accreditation to the new ISO45003 standard on psychosocial risk in 2021, they already had whole person approach to safety, considering not just physical safety, but also psychological safety (via effective leadership) and wellbeing.  As an organisation working in facilities management, the biggest risk EMCOR UK faced was its people not being safe and well, and Jonathan Gawthrop’s new role as Executive Director of Safety, Quality and Risk was a natural extension of a more holistic approach to risk across the organisation.

When Jonathan proposed that EMCOR UK enter the 2024 RoSPA Awards, it wasn’t really about the recognition.  The aim was to reflect on their journey to becoming a truly people-focused organisation and test how far they had come.  The company had already adopted a matrix approach to its risk management, working hand in hand with its people function to leverage the intersectionality of safety and psychosocial risk with areas such as Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) and wellbeing.  Going through the rigorous process of completing the RoSPA Awards entry and providing all the evidence that EMCOR UK met the different criteria, enabled them both to apply this transversal approach and test it at the same time.

A taskforce was assembled to assist Jonathan in putting together the awards entry, using subject matter experts from the different areas in the organisation that the process touched.  With everyone clear on the objective, the process became an extension of the journey they were already on, and a challenge to take it further.  It triggered new conversations on how each department was delivering against the strategy, and a new sense of engagement in the EMCOR UK mission.  At the heart of the process was an organisational mindset of ‘learning over achievement.’

Of course, the story doesn’t end here, because having gone through the process to try to win a RoSPA award, EMCOR UK discovered they were on the shortlist for the ultimate RoSPA Award - The Sir George Earle Trophy.  This involved an extensive showcase of one of the EMCOR UK sites which required a collaborative effort from all those who worked there and were involved in the site’s whole person approach. 

On discovering that EMCOR UK had won the Sir George Earle Trophy, the whole company celebrated.  And as Jonathan reflects, he says:
“I think we were able to talk about our entire organisation’s delivery of safety and health with authenticity.  For us it was never about the award, it was about recognition of the journey we had been on and the high standards we had set ourselves.” 

As well as giving the company the opportunity they wanted to reflect on how far they had come in their people-centred approach, the award also inspired them to further leverage safety to bolster their ongoing Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) initiatives.  As a direct result of the RoSPA Award win, EMCOR UK has linked safety to a social value initiative that offers employment opportunities in EMCOR UK to care leavers.  The ‘EMCOR UK Sir George Earle Academy’ is the outcome, and it will work with RoSPA to develop participants safety skills and give them a qualification in this area. 

As Jonathan concludes: “Safety today is on an exciting trajectory towards people sustainability.  Finding new ways to link different organisational initiatives that focus on people both inside and outside of organisation can only help EMCOR UK be more successful in the long-term.  It is also the right thing to do.”


November 2024

Find out all about the RoSPA Health and Safety Awards 2025 at: www.rospa.com/awards