Safety, health & wellbeing

Backed by our global Safety, Health and Environment (SHE) Policy, which requires the integration of safety and health considerations into all our activities across the company, we work continuously to ensure that the risks are understood and managed responsibly. This includes developing new approaches to managing stress and helping employees understand their personal health risks, whilst we continue to build on our established programmes, which focus on workplace behaviours and attitudes.

We continue to make significant investment in providing a wide range of health and wellbeing improvement programmes across the Company. These vary according to health risk profile, function and local culture, and include general health initiatives aimed at increasing exercise levels, reducing smoking, improving nutrition and managing stress. We also have plans in place to deal with the potential threat of pandemic flu, including the provision of anti-virals for employees based in areas where adequate supplies may not be available through national treatment regimes.

Work-related stress is currently our greatest single cause of occupational illness, with continued business change, high workloads and interpersonal issues being identified as significant factors.  As part of our ongoing efforts in this area, we are adopting an increasingly proactive, risk-based approach, using wellbeing risk assessment tools to identify high-risk areas and target interventions more effectively. Over the last two years we have developed a Global Wellbeing Indicator (GWI) in collaboration with Lancaster University. Following a successful validation study of the GWI in the US, UK and Sweden during 2008, we now plan to use this tool to evaluate organisational and personal wellbeing across the Company.

In our 2008 global employee survey, 85% of respondents stated that they believe AstraZeneca encourages employees to put safety first and 80% expressed confidence in the Company’s commitment to the health and wellbeing of its employees.

The content of this page was externally assured by Bureau Veritas, February 2009.