Stepping back to the Health & Safety Excellence Awards 2026, held on 30th April at the Crowne Plaza Hotel, Santry, United Hardware's win of the Health & Safety Excellence Award in the Warehousing category recognised a health and safety journey that began in mid-2021 and has since developed into one of the most structured and sustained cultural transformations in the sector.

What distinguishes United Hardware's approach is the ambition at the heart of it. When the company began its health and safety journey, the starting point was honest: a compliance-based culture that needed to move toward something more durable. That clarity of self-assessment is itself a mark of leadership maturity, and the multi-year improvement plan that followed has been built on an equally honest understanding of what genuine safety culture change requires, strong senior ownership, behavioural programmes, and the patience to allow change to take root across the entire organisation rather than at the surface level.

The introduction of Safety Action Teams has been a particularly significant development within the programme. By empowering employees at every level to identify issues, drive improvements, and take ownership of safety outcomes within their own areas, United Hardware has distributed accountability for workplace safety in a way that compliance-driven approaches rarely achieve. When frontline warehouse colleagues become active participants in safety leadership rather than recipients of it, the culture shift is real and self-reinforcing.

The judging panel commended the clarity and consistency of United Hardware's multi-year improvement plan, noting that the company continues to deliver on its organisational targets year on year. That consistency matters as much as ambition in long-term safety culture development. Building a warehousing environment where health and safety behaviours are second nature is not a project with a completion date but an ongoing commitment, and United Hardware has demonstrated the structures, leadership engagement, and employee empowerment needed to sustain it.

The Health & Safety Excellence Awards 2026 recognised United Hardware as an organisation that has taken the harder path and is delivering on it.

Stay tuned for the Health & Safety Excellence Awards 2027 cycle, where organisations from across Ireland will once again have the opportunity to showcase their commitment to workplace health and safety excellence.

View the full list of winners at www.hsawards.ie/shortlist, and subscribe to the newsletter to stay informed on future award cycles and industry news.