Last month Andrew Rogers, principal health consultant, travelled to Donetsk to assist one of Ukraine’s biggest companies in beginning to address one of its largest, but as yet mostly hidden, problems.
The company is Metinvest: a mining, iron and steel production multi-national. Andrew was recommended to them by a contact at the Ukraine’s Childwellbeing Fund, for whom he previously worked, developing curricula for health promotion in the community.
Andrew was asked to attend Metinvest’s annual conference, at which company members discussed the progress already made in developing leadership within an emerging health & safety culture. (This has been linked to Metinvest’s impressive corporate social responsibility [CSR] programme.) But Dr Konstantin Kokorin, health manager with Metinvest Holdings LLC, had expressed a desire to go further; he wanted to consider how Metinvest could become a world leader, not just in terms of workplace health & safety, but in adopting proactive practices to promote wellbeing across all staff groups.
The conference itself was a huge undertaking, as management of health & safety in this industry is crucial – and this company has set itself the challenge of reaching a target of zero fatalities.
Andrew’s task was to lead a focus group widening this health & safety lens to consider the health & wellbeing of all staff on a broader basis and across a much longer time scale. Through the use of self-measured wellbeing assessments, he guided company physicians, managers and key stakeholders through a process identifying those future health issues which would ultimately threaten the health of the whole company!
Like many areas of Europe, Ukraine and Russia face a rapidly ageing population, the members of which are getting sicker at a younger age. In the very near future, this single fact will have a severe impact on the availability of a fit workforce. Incredibly, the diseases that will cause this problem are no longer the so-called ‘industrial diseases’ so prevalent in mining communities , but those of a modern lifestyle which brings high usage of tobacco and alcohol and diets that are dangerously high in fats, salt and sugars.
This was a difficult subject to address for these corporate managers and doctors, whose minds are most normally focused upon safety and the prevention of accidents. Yet the discussions were productive and a range of interventions were identified for further consideration. The keystone of these is the production of a needs assessment and business case for workplace wellbeing.
This is an exciting area of development for NTTX, as it is complementary to work we undertake in the field of occupational health & safety. It is an approach that can be applied in any organisation – irrespective of its size and type of workforce.
For any further information on this or our wider Health & Wellbeing offer please contact Andrew.rogers@nttx.co.uk
