Case study | Global health and safety consultancy

Strengthening Primark’s health & safety culture across its 400 global sites

Using innovative auditing to drive global safety culture in alignment with Primark’s “Safe Today. Safe Tomorrow” strategy

Client overview

Business type

Global clothing retailer

Locations

400+ stores across 14 countries

Employees

80,000+

Key outcomes

Annual audits consistently applied across all global locations
Site leaders empowered to take ownership of safety improvements
Strong, accountable safety culture embedded across the organisation

The challenge

Primark, a global retailer operating more than 400 stores across 14 countries, wanted to strengthen its health and safety approach as part of its ‘Safe Today. Safe Tomorrow’ strategy. While strong compliance processes were already in place, traditional audits focused primarily on regulatory requirements and failed to capture the cultural and behavioural drivers of safety performance.

To achieve long-term improvement, Primark needed a more advanced approach that could assess leadership behaviours, employee engagement and cultural maturity across its global footprint. This required moving beyond compliance to deliver meaningful insights that would empower site leaders, support consistent standards and embed accountability at every level of the organisation.

Key challenges included:

Moving beyond compliance-led auditing to a culture-focused approach
Achieving consistency across 400+ global locations
Measuring leadership behaviours and employee engagement in safety
Embedding accountability at site level across diverse markets

The solution

Primark partnered with an NFP to design and implement an innovative EHS auditing approach that measures both safety systems and culture.

The audit programme was applied annually across all stores, depots and offices, delivering a consistent yet locally relevant assessment. It combined compliance checks with deeper evaluation of leadership behaviours, employee engagement and cultural maturity.

Key elements of the programme included:

A global audit framework applied consistently across all locations
Assessment of safety culture, leadership behaviours and engagement
Integration of compliance and behavioural safety measures
Clear, structured reporting aligned to Primark’s safety culture strategy
Insight-led outputs enabling benchmarking and continuous improvement
By linking audit results directly to cultural objectives, site leaders were empowered to take ownership of improvements and embed safety into everyday operations ch

The results

For their organisation

Consistent global safety standards

Established consistent safety standards globally, reducing variation and risk exposure.

Stronger leadership accountability

Increased leadership accountability, enabling faster and more effective improvements.

Proactive risk management

Improved visibility of behavioural risks to support earlier intervention and proactive risk management.

For their people

Greater involvement in safety practices

Increased employee involvement in shaping site-level safety practices.

Improved safety awareness

Built greater awareness of behaviours that influence safety outcomes.

Safer and more inclusive environments

Created safer, more accountable and inclusive working environments.

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