Health

We regard our employees as our most important asset, and regard protecting and enhancing their health and wellbeing as vital as we do their safety. So we are committed to reaching our goal of no new instances of occupational illness, as well as promoting the good health of all our employees and contractors.

But the health management of all our stakeholders does not just remain in the workplace. We are also active in establishing community health programmes in the areas where we mine.

How we support our employees' health

We introduced our Group health standards in 2004 and then in 2005, began auditing them. We found that the standards have led to a significant increase in all of our employees' awareness of health issues and to a very noticeable improvement in performance.

We have also become more aware that although technology is rapidly reducing physical demands, muscular-skeletal (MS) illnesses remain the most common cause of new occupational illnesses, particularly at our smelters where employees do heavy lifting.

Heavy equipment also tends to be noisy, which is why noise induced hearing loss (NIHL) tends to be a problem at our sites. But we are working on finding ways to reduce noise levels.

We are also exploring increasingly in countries where the prevalence of HIV/Aids is high.  But we believe the mining industry has a role to play in combating its spread, and so we are working closely with the relevant government agencies and NGOs.

We are working with our employees, Human Resources departments and medical insurers to design and develop active wellness programmes.

Our results

In 2004, we set an ambitious stretch target to reduce the number of new cases of occupational illness by 40 per cent between 2003-2008. We met this target and, at the end of 2006, the number of cases was 32 per cent lower than in 2005 and 69 per cent lower than in 2003. 

On noise, although we remain behind in achieving our target of a 20 per cent reduction in exposures to 85 decibels, we saw a one per cent improvement from the 2004 baseline, and we intend to continue to make noise reduction an area of focus in 2007.