AG has reinforced the importance of health and safety to its 300 strong workforce with its annual safety campaign and ‘Safe Day’ last month.

The specialist building products business which has manufacturing locations in Fivemiletown, Toome, Ballygawley and Carryduff chose Health and Safety as its core employee engagement theme for the month of October.

During the campaign, the firm held its annual ‘Safe Day’, where production across each of AG’s sites was temporarily suspended to enable employees to concentrate on this serious subject.

The initiative, led by CEO, Stephen Acheson and the Health, Safety and Environment team at AG, encourages staff to ‘make safety personal’ by focusing on the health and safety risks across all AG sites. The session centred around five main topics: Emergency Preparedness, Road Safety, Heathy Eating, Fire Safety and Mental Health.

AG has a longstanding commitment to its people and to providing a safe and healthy working environment, which is core to the firm’s better, faster, safer vision.

As a third-generation family-owned business AG wanted to promote the company’s strong family values within this intensive programme which included sessions on Emergency Response, Road Safety, Mental Health, Health and Well Being and Fire Safety.

Health, safety and environment manager, Cathy Maguire said: “The aim of this campaign was to ensure that all employees, contractors and visitors always leave our premises in the same healthy and safe way in which they arrived. We can only achieve this aim if we each take personal responsibility for safety.

“Whilst SafeDay was a tremendous success that has attracted a lot of very positive feedback across all our sites, we are keen to ensure our emphasis on health and safety continues all year round. Our staff report any hazards immediately through our ‘good catch’ programme via our Engage app. We want everyone at AG to always go home safe to their loved ones each day.”

Group CEO, Stephen Acheson added: “At AG, the wellbeing of our employees is one of our core values. Safety is an essential component of all activities and it needs to be managed in such a manner as to avoid, reduce or (at the very least) control risk. Safety is the most crucial investment we can make.

“The objective for AG’s SafeDay campaign is to help make safety personal. We want to encourage ‘Good Catches’ and hazard spotting as part of everyday work practice and run a range of initiatives throughout the year. We have made great progress in improving health and safety practices across the business and will continue to develop this positive culture into the future.”