Healthy People
The health and wellbeing of people is central to the success of our business. Understanding the potential for health risks and establishing suitable mitigation measures are integral to the success of our journey towards Zero Harm.
Health risks continue to be an area where we are attempting to reduce both potential short and long-term impacts. These health risks are diverse in the areas in which we operate and are not only related to work processes. Significant community-based health risks also exist in our business, and we continue to contribute to the management of these issues on both a local and global basis.
Our approach to workforce and community health is incorporated in our Charter, which states that we have ‘an overriding commitment to health, safety, environmental responsibility and sustainable development’ and our Sustainable Development Policy, which states that we will:
- Strive to achieve leading industry practice.
- Meet or, where less stringent than our standards, exceed applicable legal and other requirements.
- Ensure we do not compromise our safety values, and seek ways to promote and improve the health of our workforce and the community.
Our Policy commitments are reflected in our Company-wide health targets.
Our HSEC Management Standards form the basis for our management systems and define our approach to employee health assessment and protection and to community health activities. Organisational knowledge about health issues is fostered by our Global Occupational Hygiene Network.
Some of the potential health risks present in the organisation include:
- Inherent occupational health risks associated with the nature of our operations, such as noise, dust, hazardous materials and gases, and vibration.
- Infectious diseases present in some of the countries in which we operate, including HIV/AIDS and mosquito-borne diseases.
- Travel-related risks.
- Ergonomic exposures relating to work requirements.
- General suitability for job criteria and fitness for work.
Fitness for work is an important area of employee health. For example, to ensure that health matters do not impact on the safety of the workplace, we have developed drug, alcohol and fatigue management programs at our operations.
To ensure a holistic approach to employee health, we have combined our Fit for Work program with a series of Fit for Life initiatives that include injury management, employee counselling and health promotion.
For details on our approach to the management of these aspects, see Employee Health and Community Health.
See a summary of our health performance for the year ended 30 June 2007.
