Article Text
Abstract
The importance of health and wellbeing is increasing, due to ageing workforce, increasing costs of health care and expectations from younger workers. Heineken is a global company operating in many different environments in developed and developing countries. To make it possible to operate sustainably in these different places, attention to the health of the workforce is important. Occupational health is often determined more by local legislation than by the company from a Global perspective, however more and more we see a call for the company to act on the health and wellness of the workforce. At the very minimum, workers who want to be able to live a healthy life, have to be able to do so in the workplace, and the company has to facilitate this. Many of our local operating companies do more than that and provide health care for their employees as well as wellness programs to help employees stay healthy and fit. From a global perspective, our role is to help to set some standards, ensuring that the interventions chosen are based on evidence, and provide a well balanced set of interventions ensuring both the environment of the worker as well as the behaviour are addressed and that all major relevant health issues are taken into account. We ensure that our operating companies adhere to standards on HIV care, basic health care and emergency care in those countries where this is not sufficiently provided by the health care system. The GRI reporting standard on occupational health and safety will help to set the minimum standard for the health and wellness we are doing, but also get some recognition for the work that is being performed and that is to a certain extent reflected in our sustainability reports, but so far not yet in a comparable way.