Make a policy-driven organisational commitment to protect, support and promote workforce physical and mental health.

BlueScope – Prioritising health and well-being at work

The research is clear. Prioritising health and well-being supports our teams to be the best they can be. So, BlueScope has formalised its approach to the well-being of its people by adopting the health and well-being wheel.

What exactly is health and well-being?

In its simplest form, well-being is “our ability to feel good and function as we navigate life’s highs and lows” according to expert workplace well-being teacher, Dr Michelle McQuaid. It includes physical, emotional, mental and social components.

Putting well-being front and centre

The benefits are multiple and profound when businesses prioritise health and well-being. “It’s contagious. Research shows in organisations that prioritise well-being, people are more likely to feel engaged, productive and satisfied and are less likely to burn out,” she says.

Other advantages include fewer safety incidents, lower absenteeism and lower turnover. Better innovation, higher customer ratings and above average shareholder returns are other positive outcomes.

BlueScope’s new Health and Well-being Model

The well-being wheel is based on extensive international research and ISO and World Health Organization standards.

A huge amount of activity already happens across BlueScope to ensure everyone is safe, healthy and able to work to their full potential. The well-being wheel creates structure around this and helps us prioritise and focus our efforts.

“It helps everyone in the business to look at health and wellbeing, as well as our risks, in a multifaceted, holistic way,” says Chief People Officer, Peta Renkin.

The wheel comprises four key focus areas:

• Healthy people: involving people’s minds, lifestyle and bodies.
• Healthy workplaces: incorporating facilities and amenities, work environment and plant and equipment.
• Thriving at work: encompassing development and growth, job quality and purpose and working conditions.
• Thriving culture: comprising leadership, connectedness and belonging.

Putting the wheel into practice

Let’s use an example to bring the well-being wheel to life. One of BlueScope teams recently changed the structure of its roster from day work to a rotational model. After the new system had been in place for some time, it emerged some of BlueScope people were suffering fatigue.

Looking through the protect lens, BlueScope was able to refer to the parameters of the Thriving at Work > Work Organisation focus area, drilling into the Working Conditions segment of this part of the wheel.

“This gave us an opportunity to make sure we were following industry guidelines about best practice standards for taking breaks and how the roster was designed. We also explored policies and procedures around job demands, including undertaking particular tasks during the night as part of a roster,” the HSE team explains.

“Turning to the Facilities and Amenities & Work Environment segment of the Healthy Workplaces focus area, we were able to make sure the team had access to canteen and meal preparation facilities, to support their ongoing health and well-being,” they add.

Research suggests when people operate machinery, the last two hours of their nightshift can be the riskiest when it comes to fatigue. Working together, using the Healthy Workplaces frame of reference, the team made sure they rotated around equipment during the final hours of their shift to help reduce the risk of incidents related to fatigue.

Making the most of the wheel

The wheel has been designed so it can be applied to any situation and to provide guidance to BlueScope’s business and everyone in it to make good decisions. But it’s not mandated and it’s not linear, so you don’t have to consider segments in a particular order or apply every part of the wheel to every situation.

Ensuring effective controls to protect from, prevent and mitigate illnesses at work through best practices in industrial hygiene, ergonomics and work-related stress management.

Qatar Steel – Heat Stress Programme

During the summer, Qatar is very hot and humid, with temperatures ranging between 33°C to above 50°C and relative humidity sometimes reaching up to 100%.

Jobs involving operations in a hot environment where high air temperatures, radiant heat sources, high humidity, or strenuous physical activities have a high potential to induce heat-related illness and injuries to employees engaged in such operations. Considering this situation, Qatar Steel designed and implemented a Heat Stress Management Programme.

The programme aims to protect the health of the worker from heat-related illness and injuries resulting from exposure to heat. The practice is based on the standard risk-based approach.

The practice applies to all personnel working in the Qatar Steel plant (including company employees, contractors and visitors) at all worksites and projects that require individuals to work in a hot climate.

The safety and health of Qatar Steel’s employees, contractors and visitors supersedes production pressure. If a task cannot be performed safely, it will not be done. The company’s goal is Zero Harm, and one of the core values is “caring”, which puts people and environment before the production of steel. The leadership team is fully committed through their Sustainability Policy (signed by the Company Managing Director & CEO), which covers Safety, Health and the Environment.

They have also signed a pledge to show their commitment to the Heat Stress Management Programme, and carry out monthly site visits to monitor whether the HSE policies, procedures and rules are effective and being followed by the employees and contractors. They engage with staff at all levels to discuss HSE related challenges and achievements.

Before 2019 there were numerous medical cases amongst employees and contractor staff, relating to heat stress or heat exhaustion at Qatar Steel. The implementation of the Heat Stress Programme during the summer of 2019 resulted in zero heat stress-related medical cases reported for Qatar Steel and contractor employees. This is an exceptional milestone reached considering the extreme working conditions in the Middle East during summer.

Foster a health-conscious culture through ongoing education, training, and active workforce engagement.

Tata Steel – Improving workforce engagement in health and well-being

In 2022, Tata Steel in the UK launched a multifaceted programme of activities to improve workforce engagement in health and well-being issues.

Under the programme, a portfolio of resources, and a network of active collaborators were developed.

This person-centred approach encouraged diversity and inclusion with volunteer collaborators from all areas of the business. These collaborators became ‘Health Champions’. Health Champions actively work to improve the health and well-being of their colleagues through a wide range of activities; some of these activities include:

• Creating a monthly resource based on different health and well-being themes
• Sharing personal stories to raise awareness and promote discussion of health issues
• Deliver neurodiversity awareness and support
• Running weekly online meditation sessions
• Workload and well-being tool created to encourage conversation within team meetings
• Running of mental health awareness open day
• Menopause support group
• Tata Steel have over 400 Mental Health First Aiders (MHFA) across Tata Steel UK.
• Recently opened, the first Wellbeing Hub at Port Talbot, Wales, UK that has seen over 65 employees attend.

By increasing the visibility of health and well-being, every month, Tata Steel is seeing an increasing number of colleagues coming forward with ideas to share and volunteering to collaborate on health and well-being topics,

Establish continuous programmes to promote health.

Liberty Steel – Global Health Challenge

The intent of the Health Challenge is to help our people develop healthy habits by being active while having a bit of fun and friendly competition along the way.

Participants registered for the challenge in teams of five committed to take at least 10 thousand steps per participant per day over a period of two months.

Each team had a nominated team leader who was responsible for motivating the team and collecting and submitting the steps on behalf of the team each week. This was done via a simple custom-built online tracking website and posted on a public leaderboard weekly. Participants and spectators are kept updated on the challenge via internal social media channels where they can also share their journeys and motivate one another.

In 2023, over 200 teams and 1,000 employees from all over the world participated in the challenge. By the end of the 8-week challenge, teams had collectively walked over 612 million steps, further than the distance between the Earth and the moon and equivalent to 12 laps around Earth. The level of engagement has been overwhelming with hundreds of social posts and comments, and thousands of employees following the channels.

Create healthy workplaces by improving work process design and investing in and modernising workstations, offices and common areas.

Tenaris – Ergonomics programme

Before implementing its ergonomics programme, Tenaris’ Brazilian production centre reported an average of 42 employees per year with work restrictions due to injuries associated with poor ergonomics. Upon launch, an initial assessment covered 178 risk activities.

Following this assessment, a three-year ergonomics programme was introduced, including an annual review and evaluations by a cross-functional team to establish investment priorities.

Two methods were applied: engineering solutions and improvements guided by the corresponding work areas. Employee engagement was key in promoting an ergonomic culture, which led to a reduction in ergonomic risks.

As the ergonomic culture developed, the project’s scope grew, driven by employee engagement and the expertise of specialists. By 2022, the number of activities reviewed since the programme launch reached 716.

The programme established a robust ergonomic culture and led to a considerable reduction in ergonomic injuries, which decreased from an average of 42 to 7 cases annually. Compared to the 178 initial activities assessed in 2016, highrisk tasks decreased from 35% to 17%.

Ensure medical and psychological support is available.

Baosteel – Medical and health service centres

The Baosteel Emergency Centre (Baosteel Plant Outpatient Department) was established in 1986 and is located in the heart of the Baoshan base, between the three blast furnaces of the steelmaking plant and the ironmaking plant.

The centre mainly provides on-site first aid within about 22 square kilometres of Baosteel’s plant. It is also responsible for on-site medical care for all kinds of emergencies on the production line, outpatient and emergency services for plant employees, health management, sick leave management, and approval for employees’ return to work.

Staffed with more than 20 doctors, nurses and drivers, with 1 senior title, 16 intermediate titles and 4 general practitioners among the medical staff, the centre has implemented a 24-hour shift system involving doctors, nurses and drivers.

It is equipped with 6 ambulances, in which the medicines and instruments are configured in strict accordance with the quality control standards of Shanghai pre-hospital emergency care. The resuscitation room is equipped with a ventilator, suction machine, a gastric lavage machine, defibrillator, cardiac monitor, phlebotomy equipment, tracheotomy bag and so on.

In order to help the ambulances reach the accident location in time, 168 medical emergency points were set up in the Baosteel plant. The drivers have to draw the first aid points on a map for easy searching and memorising. This ensures that the first aiders arrived at any accident location within ten minutes.

The centre actively participates in all kinds of pre-hospital emergency care skill competitions organised by the Shanghai Emergency Care System and Shanghai Enterprise and Public Health Association. The Baosteel Emergency Centre has won a number of prizes in several pre-hospital emergency care skill competitions.

In recent years, the centre has widely conducted industry benchmarking activities, continuously strengthened the professional skills training of medical staff, comprehensively improved the quality of staff, and strived to build a more “professional, efficient and fast” pre-hospital emergency team to ensure the safe production of the steel industry.

First aid training and AED distribution
Since July 2023, the Baosteel Emergency Centre has been providing automatic external defibrillator (AED) distribution services for all companies under China Baowu. At the same time, it has continuously increased the strength of prehospital first aid training for employees and promoted the implementation of the action plan for Healthy Baowu. Up to now, 27 AEDs have been placed in a number of companies. At the same time, the comprehensive distribution of AEDs in Baosteel’s Baoshan base is underway.

With the development of AED distribution work, the prehospital first aid skills training for employees has also been further strengthened. Since March 2023, a total of more than 20 first aid skills training sessions have been held for employees of various companies under the China Baowu, with a cumulative total of more than 1,000 employees participating in the training.

Occupational health inspection
The Baosteel Physical Examination Centre was entrusted by the Baosteel Baoshan Base, jointly with Shanghai Lung Hospital, to conduct occupational health examinations for its workers exposed to occupational disease hazards. The examination items include pre-screening, blood collection, ultrasound, electrocardiogram, blood pressure, lung function, internal medicine, radiography, ENT and electro-audiometry. The role of medical institutions in occupational health monitoring is fully developed.