Day 085 - 08 Feb 95 - Page 24
1
2 Q. You said that there is a lot of work in the health and
3 safety area recently concerning customers. What is the
4 relevance of that to work or lack of it on health and
5 safety for employees? Does it mean that that just had to
6 take priority, or that you felt that there was not more
7 work to be done at the moment with regard to health and
8 safety of employees, or is it just a matter of fact which
9 you have stated?
10 A. I would say it is a matter of fact what we have
11 stated. It is not that customer safety is of greater
12 priority. It is just the matters that seem to have been
13 prioritised and brought to my attention from taking on Jill
14 Barnes' reporting to me. There have been a number of
15 issues on health, customer health and safety. However,
16 under the broad heading of safety within McDonald's, we
17 have been looking at food safety in some detail and taking
18 a number of initiatives in the food safety area.
19
20 MR. MORRIS: I might have misunderstood you, I am not sure. I
21 just thought that what you were saying was that the
22 responsibility for employees' health and safety largely
23 fell to the Customers Services department?
24 A. I am sorry if I gave that impression -- not at all.
25
26 Q. But they were the ones who would have got the RIDDOR
27 statistics, for example. You said before yesterday,
28 I think -----
29 A. They are bit like a clearing house, if you like. That
30 is where, not RIDDOR statistics, but incident report forms
31 go in to Customer Services. They do not just hang on to
32 them. They go to the appropriate department so they
33 can -----
34
35 MR. JUSTICE BELL: They are the sort of sorting office?
36 A. Sorting house, so then they would go to the regional
37 health and safety officers, if it was a matter of health
38 and safety; if was a matter of a foreign body in a product,
39 it would probably go to the QA department; if it was a
40 public relations question, it would go to the
41 Communications Department.
42
43 MR. MORRIS: If we go back to the executive summary, or whatever
44 it is, pages 800, 801? If we go to page 801, if we look at
45 the first paragraph: "... the example of how 'hustle' was
46 interpreted demonstrates that health and safety were
47 considered as secondary in the provision of a 'quality
48 service'." We did discuss that before. I know it is going
49 over old ground a bit, but do some stores get very
50 enthusiastic about speed and efficiency at the expense of
51 safety? Is that something which you have had to talk to
52 managers about?
53 A. They are enthusiastic about serving customers quickly
54 and politely and pleasantly. It is the two things that
55 they understand makes the customers' experiences getting
56 your food reasonably quickly and also with a smile on the
57 face and not being thrown at them. So, we recognise that
58 transaction has a number of elements that make that up. It
59 is the bringing together of the both of them that gives the
60 customer the best impression of the restaurant.
