Safe and Inclusive - Our progress | Heidelberg Materials UK

Our Policy

We place the health and wellbeing of employees, communities, and suppliers at the core of our business operations

Headline KPIs

Fairness, awareness, inclusion and respect

100% completion of annual HR people strategy to enhance FAIR.

Health, safety and wellbeing

Implement divisional risk reduction plans by 2025 and embed risk-based H&S management system by 2030.

Enabling and supporting KPIs

Fairness, awareness, inclusion and respect

25% women in senior roles.

Our Progress

Click to expand

Fairness, awareness, inclusion and respect (FAIR)

Our headline FAIR commitments	Our progress
100% completion of the annual HR people strategy to enhance fairness, awareness, inclusion and respect (FAIR)	The existing people strategy has been developed to cover some results for 2023 and developments for 2024 and 2025 and is led by our HR director. This includes many elements to enhance FAIR within Heidelberg Materials UK.

Our supporting FAIR commitments	Our progress
25% of women will be in senior roles	There were 14% of women in senior roles.

Further FAIR measures	Our progress
Percentage of employees by age and gender (+ women in ops and overall)	16.5% of our employees are women and 2.96% of women are employed in operational roles. The age profile of all employees is: <30 years: 17.2% 30 to 50 years: 42.7% Over 50 years: 40.1%
Hours of training per full time employee (FTE)	On average each FTE has received 28 hours of training. In addition, 12.3% of our employees were in ‘Earn and Learn’ positions.
Number of graduates and higher apprentices, and craft apprentices	There are 17 graduates employed and a total of 95 apprentices.

Health, safety and wellbeing (HS&W)

Our headline HS&W commitments	Our progress
Implement divisional risk reduction plans by 2025 and have an embedded risk-based H&S management system by 2030	Divisional risk reduction plans have been developed within the context of the integrated management system (IMS). These will continue to be improved to embed the risk-based H&S management system.

Our supporting HS&W commitments	Our progress
100% of our sites have completed the annual operational safety improvement plan and annual health and wellbeing improvement plan	The annual operational safety and health and wellbeing plans were completed by 98.2% of our sites.

Further HS&W measures	Our progress
Network of diverse internal support groups, MHFAs and external EAP support	We have over 200 mental health first aiders within our workforce, an armed forces network with 35 employees, a LGBTQ+ network with 64 employees, a Network of Women with 181 employees, 22 inclusion champions, an allyship network with 30 employees and a network of social value champions. We also have a comprehensive independently managed employee assistance programme to inform our HR strategy.
Number of fatalities per year	There were zero fatalities.
Number of potential fatal Incidents per year	There were 51 potential fatal incidents.
Number of lost time injuries (LTIs) per year	There were 20 LTIs in total consisting of 6 contractor and 14 employee injuries.
LTI frequency rate (number per 1,000,000 hours worked)	The LTI frequency rate was 2.0.
LTI severity rate (days lost per 1,000,000 hours worked)	The LTI severity rate was 94.
Total injury frequency rate (LTIs + medical treatment per 1,000,000 hours worked)	The total injury frequency rate was 4.2.
Significant near hits frequency rate (number per 1,000,000 hours worked)	The significant near hit frequency rate was 37.3.

Social value

Our headline social value commitments	Our progress
100% of higher risk sites have community engagement plans by 2025 and all sites by 2030	New criteria are being developed to enhance our community engagement plans across the business, which will result in greater transparency of our activities within the communities we operate in. These will be incorporated into our existing integrated management system.
One day per employee of paid leave offered for volunteering and 50% of employees uptake annually	We have a policy in place offering all employees one day of paid leave per year to carry out volunteering activities. In 2023 6.6% of our employees undertook a volunteering day and systems are being developed to make take up and recording of these days easier.

Our supporting social value commitments	Our progress
Standard annual social value monetisation report by 2025 and by site by 2030	Using our latest verified data from 2022 we generated almost £54 million worth of social profit in the UK, established through the delivery of a range of different performance indicators using the Loop social monetisation tool.
Charitable foundation in place	Early considerations are being undertaken by our Sustainability Director in relation to establishing a charitable foundation that will enhance and support our social value strategy and activities.
Social value strategy embedded and achieved highest level of certification within industry standards	We have achieved the COMMIT – Level 1 stage of certification with SVUK and will now begin work to achieve the IMPLEMENT – Level 2 stage of certification.

Further social value measures	Our progress
Volunteering activity events recorded	There were 78 days on which volunteering activities took place.
Spend on charitable donations and payment in kind	Total spend on charitable donations and payment in kind was £122,000.
Number of external visitors per year to operational sites	The number of external visitors to our operational sites was 18,294.

Responsible sourcing

Our headline responsible sourcing commitments	Our progress
80% of spend on critical suppliers that have an approved ESG rating	Our critical suppliers have been identified by Heidelberg Materials Group and our procurement department is working to ensure they have reached an overall green ESG rating based on external 3rd party assessment from our ESG risk partners IntegrityNext. In 2023 we achieved a level of 89% which exceeds our 2030 commitment.

In action

FAIR

The highest standard for work-based training: We have been awarded Platinum membership of The 5% Club. The new top standard was introduced to mark the campaign’s 10th anniversary in 2023 and demonstrates our commitment to investing in our workforce through a broad range of ‘earn and learn’ programmes. Learn more
Work to support veterans and reservists’ silver award: We have received the silver award in the Defence Employer Recognition Scheme, demonstrating our commitment to being an Armed Forces-friendly employer. Read more

Health Safety & Wellness

Setting the standard for nuclear safety

We are one of the first companies in the UK to be certified to the new ISO 19443 standard, which seeks to drive nuclear safety culture, confirming our status as a leading supplier to the sector. Read more

Safety awards

We won three awards at the Mineral Products Association Health and Safety awards: Safer management of pedestrians and transport on site, for our pedestrian-traffic management process;
Safer together, for our 5S Council entry;
Young leader, jointly won by our quarry operative, Shaun Holbrow

Wellbeing calendar

There were a range of events through the year to support our employees’ health and wellbeing. In Mental Health Awareness Week, for example, we gifted all our employees a packet of seed sticks to encourage them to get outdoors and enjoy the benefits of gardening. And, in Stress Awareness Month, we organised a live seminar, hosted by our workplace wellbeing partner Health Assured to provide our employees with guidance and support on dealing with stress.

Wellbeing challenge

To encourage employees to get fitter by taking part in regular exercise, we teamed up with End to End, an interactive business which runs wellbeing challenges. We were delighted that 117 energetic individuals signed up and ran, walked and cycled a total of 12,207 miles across the 4-week challenge. On completion of the challenge, our efforts resulted in the donation of 100 meals to help families and children who are homeless, and the planting of 400 trees within the Eden Reforestation project.

Social value

Social profit report for 2022: We published our social profit report for 2022 which showed that we generated almost £54 million worth of social profit in the UK, established through the delivery of a range of different performance indicators using the Loop social monetisation tool. Learn more
Social Value and FAIR Coordinator: Jops Dann has been appointed as our Social Value and FAIR Coordinator to ensure we succeed in these increasingly important areas of our business.
Continued support for struggling young readers: We have continued our work with Chapter One UK, which provides one-to-one reading support struggling young readers. The programme can deliver real improvement to the future life chances of underprivileged children. Read more
The Next Chapter horse charity: We have donated time and materials to help a horse and pony sanctuary that was hit by flooding in the aftermath of a storm early in 2024. The Next Chapter Rescue and Rehoming Centre is a not-for-profit charitable trust that relies on donations to help, rehabilitate and rehome horses and ponies that have been neglected, abused or no longer cared for.
This included 20 tonnes of aggregate from our MQP Cliffe Hill quarry in Bardon Hill, Leicestershire and volunteers from our Syston customer service centre who used the material to resurface the car park and create a safe standing area for volunteers and visitors to the centre. We also raised £290 towards horse feed and vet bills and donated some horse blankets to the charity.
Summer fun and open days: Over 400 of our employees and their families had a great time at our summer family day held at Butts Park Arena, Coventry.

Over 5,000 people attended our open day at our Whatley quarry in Somerset to learn more about our operations.
Tavistock and Manchester Pride: Our colourful aggregate tipper truck and ready-mixed concrete trucks showed our support for the LGBT+ community at Tavistock Pride and Manchester Pride.
CSR spend: Our direct and indirect contributions to registered charities and other organisations which we support was over £122,000.

Responsible sourcing

Our Sustainability Commitments 2030 emphasise the importance of responsible sourcing and supplier sustainability for our procurement activities; and our Supplier Code of Conduct sets out comparable standards which are enforced through our Global Responsible Procurement Initiative.

As a minimum, 80% of spend on critical suppliers will be on those that have reached an overall green ESG rating based on an external third party assessment from our ESG risk partners IntegrityNext.

At the end of 2023 we had already exceeded our commitment with 89% compliance.

In our latest audit to the more stringent version 4 of BES 6001, the Framework Standard for Responsible Sourcing of Construction Products, we achieved an Excellent rating for all 7 areas of the business audited: concrete, cement, asphalt, regen, packed products, aggregate and MQP.

It was also confirmed in the audit that Heidelberg Materials UK complies with the key principles of the sustainable procurement standard ISO 20400.

Category	Employees	Non-Employees	LTI-FR	LTI-SR
2018	13	7	1.77	84.91
2019	7	12	0.95	28.80
2020	7	11	1.06	17.34
2021	13	13	1.82	38.88
2022	10	6	1.41	18.86
2023	14	6	2.04	93.65

Data by business line

Number of lost time injuries

PDF, 91.97 KB

Community Relations

PDF, 74.06 KB