Kmart Group - Health, safety and wellbeing

Kmart Group is committed to improving the health, safety and wellbeing of team members and providing a safe shopping experience for its customers. 

Kmart finished the 2021 financial year with a 21.8 per cent reduction in its TRIFR to 10.6. Target achieved an eighth consecutive year of improved safety performance with a 50.4 per cent TRIFR reduction to 6.1, while Catch achieved a TRIFR of 1.9. Kmart Group recorded a combined TRIFR of 9.2. 

Kmart Group implemented a comprehensive COVID-19 risk control strategy in response to the COVID-19 public health emergency that has enabled all Kmart Group sites to provide a safe working and shopping environment, and comply with evolving government restrictions.

Kmart 

Throughout the year, Kmart continued to drive a strategic plan of continuous improvement across four pillars of safety, regulatory compliance, wellbeing and injury management.

This work incorporated the management of the rapidly emerging and often evolving information regarding the COVID-19 pandemic. To help reduce risk of community and workplace transmission, Kmart delivered a substantial program of controls and training across stores, distribution centres and national office in Australia as well as overseas operations in New Zealand and Asia.

In addition, Kmart successfully undertook a complex program of conversion of more than 90 stores to Kmart and K hubs. This included refreshing plant and equipment to embed safety standards in line with anticipated stock volume uplift.

Kmart also focused on the delivery of tangible safety changes for customers and team members. This included the introduction of a range of safety enhancements to fixtures, fittings, and equipment. These changes to reduce laceration risks include design change to roll cages, removal of 120-degree prongs and covering of apparel arms. Kmart New Zealand sites have new equipment to reduce risk of manual handling injury.

For our team members, new personal protective equipment standards were introduced to ensure consistent standards across the business, with new mandatory protocols for use of cut resistant glove use, safety shoes and eye protection. 

Kmart also invested heavily in providing access to improved mental health training, psychosocial hazard awareness programs for leaders and the delivery of wellbeing services for all team members.

Alongside the delivery of these major change programs, Kmart continued to achieve a strong safety result with a 21.8 per cent TRIFR reduction to 10.6 and reduction of new workers compensation claims by 13.8 per cent to 469. 

Target 

Target achieved an eighth consecutive year of improved safety performance with a 50.4 per cent TRIFR reduction to 6.1 and reduction of new workers compensation claims by 51.1 per cent to 86.   

The significant improvement of performance has been attributed to the business placing an increased focus on proactive hazard and near miss incident reporting to address and mitigate risk. The introduction of iAuditor software to all sites resulted in the capture and action of 4,193 hazards and 1,919 near miss incidents. 

The improved performance was observed over a significant period of change for the business with the closure or conversion of some Target stores within the financial year. Over 5,298 safety inspections were conducted to support the safe completion of activity associated with store network changes.

Other key achievements over the financial year included the introduction of a Mental Health Oversight Committee to further develop Target’s Health and Wellbeing Strategy, release of an updated safety training curriculum and approval of $3.8 million of additional capital expenditure as part of Target’s hazard reduction program. 

Catch 

Catch has maintained a strong TRIFR result in the 2021 financial year of 1.9. 

Catch’s safety journey continues to develop and strengthen with the recent creation and ongoing implementation of the CatchSAFE Safety Management System (SMS). The SMS will ensure Catch creates a strong and resilient technical safety foundation to equip its teams to drive a zero-harm culture. 

Catch has proactively invested in people by developing a national safety team and agile technology platform to allow successful implementation of the safety strategy as the Catch business grows. The new safety management platform and Learning Management System (LMS) will eliminate administration waste and promote a culture of reporting.  

Capital investment in traffic management has been a strong focus, significantly reducing pedestrian risk across the sites. 

Catch remains focused on increasing employee health and safety capability, executing safety programs to support business deliverables and building a sustainable safety culture.

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