Wellbeing recognises the importance of allowing our employees to take control of their health, safety and work-life balance. We believe that providing an environment that is both safe and healthy will make us a more attractive employer.

Health and safety governance

We believe that health and safety is particularly important, not only because we believe that it is wrong to injure or make someone ill through their work, but also because we believe that a high-class health and safety culture drives excellence in business performance and, therefore, is critical to our success.

We believe that all injuries and occupational illnesses can be prevented, and this belief was the driver behind our Safety and Health philosophy.

Our UK Health and Safety policy covers all our employees. In addition, each business has its own policy covering its approach to health and safety, and the issues relating to its specific business. These policies are still being developed. Naturally, we meet all legal requirements, and the agreed minimum standards defined within our health and safety management system. We're also committed to achieving best practice standards.

Learning from mistakes is a critical part of health and safety management. All injuries are reported using our online system and must be investigated by line managers within one month of the initial report. We have developed a common accident and incident reporting system across all UK businesses and we will use the information this system provides. An accident means we have failed in our 'Rule One' ethos, so we aim to investigate the details of near-hit incidents. All operational assets are inspected as a matter of routine. These inspections comply with statutory or insurance requirements or recognised best-practice frequencies.

We have restructured our health and safety team to increase our focus on this crucial area of our business. The team is now led by a Director of Health, Safety and Environment, and those responsible for health, safety and environment within our businesses report to him. This structure is supported by a cross-functional senior management group and we hold regular meetings of senior health, safety and environment managers to ensure best practice is shared effectively. We are also looking at the way we consult with our employees on health and safety issues.

The SHE Leadership Team believes that line management responsibility for health and safety is fundamental in driving performance improvement forward. The functional role is to provide tools, techniques and practice to support line managers.

2006 health and safety performance

In 2000, the Government launched its 10-year 'Revitalising Health and Safety' strategy to give fresh impetus to health and safety at work. The electricity industry reacted by developing 'SAFELEC 2010', which sets out how we as an industry will contribute to the Government's targets. We are fully committed to this initiative.

In 2006, all but one business achieved its internal Total Recordable Injury Rate (TRIR) threshold; however, we missed our SAFELEC 2010 target for major injuries (29 against a target of 21).

The E.ON Group has set itself an ambitious improvement plan for the next four years based on delivering performance comparable with the petrochemical sector by 2010.

The E.ON Group has set itself an ambitious improvement plan for the next four years based on delivering performance comparable with the petrochemical sector by 2010.

E.ON UK has been set a 15% reduction in Lost Time Incident Frequency Rate (LTIFR) for employees during 2007. This equates to a reduction in LTIFR from 2.92 to 2.5.

We fundamentally believe that:

• all injuries and occupational illnesses can be prevented
• excellence in health and safety drives excellence in business performance.

Our aspiration is to have zero injuries.

We produced a Safety, Health and Environment Plan to transform our health and safety performance based around our 'Rule One' philosophy.

Our aim is to be the leader in health and safety performance within the E.ON Group by 2010. This requires a significant improvement in our performance from current levels as outlined in the table below to a level that sits comfortably next to the best UK industrial performers.

We also aim to reduce our sickness absence rate which impacts negatively on our performance and costs us around £15 million each year. During 2006, we continued to promote a range of initiatives that focus on wellbeing, such as voluntary health assessments for all employees including advice on stress and diet, while our Bikes4Work scheme offers employees a tax-efficient and affordable way to purchase a bike to use on their journey to work. We have introduced a new attendance policy and provide training for managers to help them address absence issues both professionally and sensitively.

In addition to this, we also concentrated on a range of activities across the businesses, including:

• reviewing the occupational health resources and a new structure for our occupational health professionals providing dedicated teams to service business needs
• launching 'OH.One', our occupational health helpline
• launching 'Active Energy', a lifestyle and behaviour programme, in which 1,277 tests were completed between July and December 2006
• reviewing health surveillance and fitness for work assessments
• relaunching of our stress audit tool
• the ongoing provision of our Employee Assistance Programme for all employees
• launching 'Rule.One'
• launching a cross-company accident and incident reporting database known as ARNIE
• developing and launching a high-level safety and attendance plan
• undertaking a Health and Safety Legal compliance audit, and implementing and resourcing improvement plans
• developing a safety toolkit for managers developed, ready to roll out in 2007
• undertaking an occupational road risk project undertaken and presenting recommendations to the E.ON UK Board
• planning the 2007 E.ON group-wide Health and Safety Summit in the UK
• functional restructuring to bring together Safety, Health and Environment under a central SHE Director
• providing three safety exchange and best practice functional days for   health and safety   specialists.

In 2007, our approach to performance improvement will be through visible, action-based leadership, using leading and lagging indicators to measure improvement.

2006 Health and Safety performance

Health and Safety Performance

	2003	2004	2005	2006	2007 targets	2010 targets
Total Recordable Injury Rate (TRIR) per 100,000 hours worked	0.39	0.86	0.67	0.52	0.25	0.25
Lost Time Injury Frequency Rate (LTIFR) per 1,000,000 hours worked	N/A	6.0	4.1	2.9	2.5	1.0
Sickness absence (average days lost per full time employee)	11.97	9.86	12.11	12.11	9	5
Fatalities	0	2	0	0	0	0

Contractors

All contractors are required to work safely on our sites and any incidents must be reported and investigated in the same way as we would with one involving an employee. Contractor performance is included in our TRIR measurement, and is monitored at local, business and Board level.

On Friday 30 June 2006, three people were involved in an incident at Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station. Two were taken to hospital for treatment for burns as a result of exposure to high temperature water vapour released when a piece of pipe work failed at the bottom of the boiler.

At the time of the incident, the unit concerned was undergoing routine tests ready for a return to service following a 14-week routine planned inspection and maintenance overhaul. The unit was due back into operation on 9 July 2006.

Both the injured people were working for us and have since been released following hospital treatment. Following the incident, all of Ratcliffe's four generating units were withdrawn from service for remedial work to prevent a recurrence. We shared our findings from the incident with other generating companies and this culminated in the Association of Electricity Producers working with the Health and Safety Executive to produce an agreed industry way forward.

The wellbeing of our people

We aim to improve health and work-life balance by offering choices to individuals, alongside a range of promotions based on encouraging healthy lifestyles and a positive work-life balance. For example, all businesses promoted the Active Energy assessment to employees during 2006, with 1,500 employees taking the opportunity to get a general health check. The assessment looks at general health profiles such as blood pressure, cholesterol, body fat ratio, diet and lifestyle, and risk of diabetes, and more sophisticated tests to measure stress resilience and postural analysis. From the results, individuals receive follow-up care and advice tailored to their needs, and an opportunity to take part in intervention programmes and workshops.

Other benefits include the Employee Assistance Programme which provides a free and confidential advice service to employees.

Targets