Health and safety

We are committed to providing a safe and healthy working environment for everyone. We have adopted global policies, mandatory procedures, and incident and information reporting systems across the organisation that reflect our core values and are aligned to international standards.

Our global health and safety performance is subject to ongoing monitoring and assurance to ensure we are compliant with relevant laws and regulations.

Our chief operating officers have overall responsibility for engendering a positive health and safety culture and ensuring that global policies, procedures and systems are put into practice locally. They also have responsibility for ensuring all local legal requirements are met.

HSBC is committed to the effective delivery and continual improvement of our health and safety management system and will ensure that:

• HSBC develops a culture where all our people and stakeholders take responsibility for the health and safety of themselves and others
• Appropriate resources will be provided to meet our health and safety commitments
• HSBC’s leaders, managers, employees and third parties are responsible for ensuring they proactively identify, manage and eliminate hazards and reduce risks in the workplace
• All health and safety risks will be assessed, managed, recorded, monitored and reported according to the HSBC Operational Risk Management Framework and 10 key controls for Workplace Safety
• Appropriate information, instruction, training and supervision will be provided to employees and contractors
• HSBC is committed to consultation and participation on health and safety matters with employees, third parties (and their representatives)
• Employees can raise safety issues and concerns through their line managers or HSBC Confidential
• Non-HSBC employees can raise safety issues and concerns either with their line manager, the HSBC office or branch manager, or any HSBC employee
• Health and safety performance goals will be set and met annually to promote continuous improvement
• HSBC will provide an effective OHS management system that drives continual review and improvement, in accordance with ISO 45001

Putting our commitment into practice

We delivered a range of activities in 2024 to help us understand and manage our health and safety risks:

• We achieved the WELL Health and Safety Rating from the International WELL Building Institute at 54 of our global offices as a demonstration of our commitment to the provision of safe and healthy workplaces for our employees, customers and stakeholders
• We reinforced our advice and risk assessment and control methodology on working from home for employees adopting a hybrid work style, providing more awareness and best practices on good ergonomics and well-being
• We delivered health and safety training and awareness to 228,000 of our employees and contractors globally, ensuring roles and responsibilities were clear and understood
• We completed the annual safety inspection on all of our buildings globally, to ensure we were meeting our standards and continuously improving our safety performance
• We maintained measures in our workplaces globally to minimise the risks from the spread of respiratory disease, including through the provision of hand sanitiser, improved ventilation and guidance on good hygiene practices
• We extended the reach of our Workplace Adjustments programme to include all colleagues in India, providing tools and technologies which contribute to making work-life manageable for employees with disability (including physical or sensory), long term / mental health condition or a neurodiversity, and will continue the expansion of this programme to further regions
• We continued to hold health and safety-themed awareness campaigns and facilitate CPR and first aid training for our colleagues
• We continued to provide our guidance and training programme for our construction partners, focusing on our key markets globally to reduce the likelihood of accidents occurring by helping them understand and deliver industry-leading health and safety performance. More than 7,200 construction workers received safety passport training across 13 countries
• In 2024, we achieved full implementation of the Eat Well Live Well programme across 100 per cent of catered HSBC sites, driving global healthy food sales to 32 per cent with over 10 per cent of all dishes sold globally being plant-based. These results were supported by monthly Eat Well Live Well events, and virtual teaching kitchens accessible to all employees
• Protection of our colleagues and operations is of critical importance, and we have effective controls in place to protect our people from natural disasters (such as storms and earthquakes). In 2024, there were 40 named storms that passed over 3,127 of our buildings, resulting in no injuries and only a minor impact on three of our buildings