The Irish Businesses, owned by the PHOENIX Group, Europe’s leading healthcare provider, include United Drug, Lloyds Pharmacy, and TCP Homecare. The group were delighted to announce that they have been shortlisted for the Health & Safety Excellence Awards 2023 under the categories of Healthcare and Warehousing.

The Healthcare Group began their discussions back in 2020 around the potential dangers of Covid-19 to the business. It was critical that whatever challenges lay ahead, would not impact the supply of vital medicines across the Irish Healthcare system and that every Pharmacy and distribution site would, where possible, remain operational.

Today, the Covid-19 task force remains active alongside our teams who maintain Ireland’s sole distribution for the vaccines. The priority remains, to protect our employees whilst also meeting customer and patients’ needs and ultimately ensuring that the supply chain for the requirements of Pharmacies and Hospitals across Ireland is not impacted by Covid-19.  

Jennifer Clarke, Health and Safety Manager for the business is proud of the hard work her team have put in is delighted they are getting the recognition they deserve “The safe management of COVID-19 across our entire business was a combined effort from all, everyone soon realised that we all had a shared responsibility to keep us all safe. The team collectively worked together and had to adapt quickly in how we carried out every task whilst also living with the unknown of what was to come.

Often when you think you’re at the end of something, you’re actually at the beginning of something else, which has resulted in a positive outlook at the importance of safety and wellbeing in the workplace post COVID-19. The improvement in our safety culture as a business has increased dramatically and the entire business are stronger and more resilient as a result of their collective efforts during the pandemic.

I am proud to have joined a company that already has this culture imbedded and safety is one of our core values. Our focus has been and will continue to be on the health, safety and wellbeing of our people.”

Best of luck to our Health and Safety teams and all those who contributed to the Covid-19 Task force!

You can view the full shortlist here.