Creating Value with the Future in Mind - Anglo American South Africa

Health strategy
Global health
Developing
countries
Communities
Benchmarking
Occupational hygiene
Leading indicators
Standards
Integrated risk management
We have refreshed the risk
management approach within the
Occupational Health Way and Group
Technical Standards for health to align
with our new Group-wide approach
to integrated risk management. An
example of this is at our Sishen mine,
where, recognising that integrated risk
management is a business-critical
issue, business-improvement teams
are now responsible for fatigue
management.
Health information systems
The ability to capture and manage
confidential health information is
critical if we are to keep our workforce
and their families healthy. Building this
capability within our business was
a central activity in 2012 and will
continue in the coming year. Health
information systems are the glue that
holds our health activities together.
They allow us to capture each health
transaction in online records so we
can track and analyse the health of all
employees. They also ensure we are
delivering a consistently high quality
of service, and enable us to measure
our performance (see case study on
Thermal Coal’s theHealthSource on
www.angloamerican.com).
Health incident reporting
‘Health incidents’ are performance
indicators in our occupational health
programmes that allow us to monitor
our critical controls. They include
employee complaints about the
working environment, observed
(or measured) failures of control
mechanisms, and signs of exposure
and disease identified in the medical
surveillance programme. The early
Families
(health insurance)
Employee health and wellness
(including HIV/AIDS)
Occupational health
Anglo American Occupational Health Way (AOHW)
Occupational medicine
Leading and lagging indicators
Guidelines Support Assurance
HEALTH INFORMATION SYSTEMS
detection, investigation and correction
of control failures is a way of helping
us prevent harm, as these occur well
before any visible manifestations of
occupational illness. We continue to
see encouraging improvement in the
quality of health incident reporting
across all business units.
Engagement and collaboration
In South Africa, the Tripartite Health
and Safety Initiative between
Anglo American, government and
unions seeks to ensure that risk
management practices are adopted
at all levels of the workforce. One of
the practices adopted for health
management is to use the SLAM (stop,
look, assess and manage) approach
that is currently being implemented
as part of broader safety-risk
management.
The inaugural Anglo American Health
Summit was held in October 2012,
bringing together one hundred of our
health and safety experts from across
the Group to share best practices and
lessons learned between business
units. This was followed in November
by another health conference to raise
the standards of health and safety
performance among our long-term
contractors. Furthermore, we are
working with all long-term contracting
companies working at our South
African operations to ensure that they
provide a basic healthcare package
for their employees. This will include
diagnosis, counselling, care, support
and treatment for HIV infection and
tuberculosis, and will be subsidised
by Anglo American and delivered
through our extensive network of
healthcare facilities.
Health
information
systems are
the glue that
holds our
health activities
together.
Improving our performance
All our businesses are required to
report on the estimated number of
people potentially exposed to hazards
that could result in occupational
illness. We measure this against set
occupational exposure limits (OELs).
These are legally prescribed limits,
set per individual health risk, above
which no employee may be exposed
without the use of personal protection
equipment (PPE). We count the
number of employees working in
conditions that exceed those limits,
even though they are being protected
with PPE. The reason we use this
measure is to identify those hazards
where we can improve controls and
perhaps eliminate the need for PPE.
The number of employees reported to
be working, pre-PPE, in environments
with noise levels in excess of the OEL
of 85 dB(A) on a daily basis during
2012 was approximately 44,590,
as compared with 44,050 in 2011.
This increase is a result of improved
reporting. Our hearing conservation
programme standard specifies the
management interventions that are
required to ensure exposure remains
below the OEL.
In 2012, the number of employees
reported to be working, pre-PPE,
in environments with inhalable hazards
at levels that exceed the individual
OEL of different inhalable hazards
was approximately 6,200. Similarly,
our respiratory protection programme
standard requires management to
reduce such exposures to below
the OEL.
The number of occupational disease
cases reported was 170, compared
with 197 in 2011. This translates to
an incidence rate of 0.189, an 8%
reduction. We report disease incidence
against the number of people exposed,
rather than against more commonly
used bigger denominators such as
total workforce, to give a more
meaningful assessment of the risk. It
is encouraging to see that there were
reductions in the number of new cases
reported in almost all categories, in
particular noise-induced hearing loss,
which dropped to 84 cases in 2012
(2011: 117).
Investing in our people
Anglo American plc Sustainable Development Report 2012 49