Health & Safety on the Agenda

As in previous years, Le Méridien St Julians Hotel & Spa in Balluta Bay has organized a very successful Health & Safety week, with an array of interesting related activities spread out between the 15th and the 23rd of October 2010.

Simulation of casualty rescue during Le Meridien Malta Fire Drill

The Health & Safety Department of Le Méridien St Julians strived to elaborate an interactive programme, involving initiatives from their mother company Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, internal sessions related to the theme, outsourced training dispensed to the staff as well as activities engaging the local community.

“It was a very rewarding and eventful week” states Joseph Zammit, Security/Health & Safety Manager at the hotel and instigator of the whole organisation. “We had a great turn-out to most of the events and an even better feed-back! I am delighted to witness a change in mentalities and a true interest from both our staff and our local community”.
Yearly mandatory initiatives from Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide were successfully incorporated in the programme, starting with a Table Top exercise, whereas all hotel key managers were presented with an emergency scenario and asked to brainstorm and work as a team to take the most relevant actions, in reaction to the given situation. Starwood also encourages its properties to involve the local community, which resulted into a very positive response. In cooperation with St Julians Local Council, children of St Julians School participated to an interactive class about waste management awareness, whilst Senior Citizens of St Julians were invited to the hotel to be presented with a useful training about First Aid and Fire Awareness.

The operational staff of Le Méridien St Julians was not left aside. Workshops of “AED – Defibrillator Training” were organized during the week and all participants were successfully accessed by Kevin Gauci, Qualified Emergency First Responder, at the end of their course. Dr. G. Portelli Demajo (Hotel Doctor) was also invited for a speech aimed at raising the awareness of the employees about the Norovirus and other related diseases – and how to best handle the situation in the worst case scenario. Conscious about the health of its team, Le Meridien St Julians also held an “Anti-Smoking” campaign in its canteen, organized by the “Smoke Campaign” government body: this resulted in 16 employees seeking for advice and 11 of them taking further appointments to plan on how to make positive changes in their lifestyle. In the middle of the week, the hotel staff was invited to donate blood at the Blood Donation Unit that was set up in front of the Hotel for the occasion. 9 donors were accounted for. Le Méridien kitchen brigade also participated to the programme by coming up with a nutritional week menu for its staff canteen, encouraging everyone to adopt healthy habits for their lunch on the place of work.

To top up all of the above activities, Joseph Zammit took the opportunity to include several internal procedures in the thematic frame of the week such as: Hotel Green Committee meeting (assessing ways to avoid incidents on the work premises and addressing other environmental issues), induction training to new employees including manual handing and risk assessment applications and – last but not least - a Night Fire Drill Simulation. Both guests in house and hotel employees were invited to join the exercise, with the participation of members from the CPD and Rescue service ambulance.

More information on http://www.lemeridienmalta.com/