Health, safety and well-being

Governance

Our vision for HSW is outlined in our Statement on Health, Safety and Welfare signed by the Chief Executive on behalf of the Board. This is reviewed annually as part of our focus on continuous improvement.

Our Health and Safety Global Standard is reviewed on an annual basis and sets out the Group's expectations for each of our businesses. This Standard is complemented by a new Employee Feedback Global Standard which seeks to introduce more rigorous reporting around feedback from our employees on the issues that matter to them most.

Barclays Capital and Barclays Wealth maintain Occupational Health and Safety Advisory Services (OHSAS) 18001 accreditations across its operations in the UK, Europe, UAE, Singapore and our New York/New Jersey campus.

Ensuring compliance

Responsibility for compliance to our standards is assigned to local subject matter experts to achieve a balance between Group goals and local requirements.

In each location, compliance with our standards is regularly monitored through a range of risk assessment, testing, reporting and escalation mechanisms as part of our Group-wide Risk and Control framework. Where applicable, this supports local requirements to report H&S matters to external authorities. For example, in the UK businesses, health and safety related incidents have to be reported to the Health and Safety Executive. These include incidents where a major injury has occurred or where an employee has been absent from their normal work activities for more than three days.

Training

Responsibility for health and safety lies with each and every employee. To ensure all employees are aware of how to protect themselves and exercise reasonable care for the health and safety of others, a range of training materials are delivered on an annual basis through the channel most appropriate to each region. For example, we use classroom-based training in more remote regions of Africa and online training in the UK.

Trade unions and employee participation

Barclays recognises and engages constructively with over 30 employee representative organisations throughout the world, in addition to work councils in France and Germany. In many locations and businesses, we have collective bargaining arrangements in place, covering various aspects of employment. Where unions are not recognised, we liaise with work councils and employee associations and engage directly with our employees.

On a regional level, Barclays facilitates the Barclays Group European Forum and Barclays African Consultation Forums, which encourage constructive and productive dialogue between colleagues and management from countries where we have a significant business presence, creating a shared agenda to ensure future success for the business.

In the UK, Barclays works in partnership with Unite, the union which represents many of our colleagues. Our five-year partnership agreement builds upon the past 10 years of Barclays and Unite working together, incorporating a focus on diversity and inclusion, learning, and colleague well-being. The partnership has delivered consecutive multi-year pay deals which have provided stability in our industrial relations, even during challenging economic times, and has also delivered a robust agreement on workplace representatives including seconded H&S representatives.

Well-being

Barclays colleagues all over the world enjoy a range of benefits, including private healthcare and flexible working, which vary depending on the region in which they are based.

For example, in the UK, we offer a comprehensive Employee Assistance Programme to all of our employees and their dependants. This is a combination of free counselling services and life management services to support colleagues. The Absa Employee Wellness Programme offers services such as telephone and face-to-face counselling and life management and physical wellness services.

We also offer many of our colleagues medical expenses schemes and access to medical treatment. For example, colleagues in Mauritius receive free medical screening where they can be tested for both diabetes and hypertension, two of the country's most common diseases. In Ghana, colleagues receive free annual medical examinations and are also offered HIV tests.

We recognise the link between volunteering and well-being and encourage all our colleagues to give their time and skills to projects in their local community by supporting them with financial grants and time away from work. We also host an annual Chairman's Awards event, which honours employees from across the business who have shown an outstanding commitment to the communities in which they work - whether through fundraising or volunteering activities. Find out more about how we’re supporting our communities.

Family Friendly

We believe that a family-friendly approach is critical to our success and offer a wide range of flexible working practices to help our people to combine their careers with family life. We are committed to regularly reviewing our suite of flexible working and family-friendly practices to ensure they help staff balance work commitments and family responsibilities.

We also work to ensure our products and services are based around our customers' needs, and cater for all life stages, from child trust funds to inheritance planning. Our employees are available by phone, in person and online to support our customers' family financial planning needs and listen to their feedback with a view to tailoring what we offer, and how we deliver it.