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Promotion of healthy lifestyle

Health promotion is an integral part of the Health Management System aimed at increasing employee awareness of occupational and general health problems and how they can be prevented. Our Health Department continues to play an active role in raising the employee’s awareness of work-related illnesses and lifestyle changes necessary to improve their health and wellbeing. It not only helps employees but also translates into a more responsible attitude towards own health and that of their respective families.

Health promotion is comprised of the regular activities, such as toolbox presentations, posters and bulletins, as well as implementation of three programs: Resilience Programme, Care for People Programme and Fatigue Risk Management Programme.

Resilience Programme

Resilience is the ability to cope with pressure and stressful events. It is a skill worth developing to maintain KPO’s performance. Industry experience demonstrates that resilience training not only increases individual resilience, but also improves team leadership, and Company’s employee engagement levels.

The KPO Resilience Programme is a free, voluntary programme that comprises 13 modules developed for small teams. The aim of the Programme is to develop a resilient workforce in KPO and to minimise the risk of stress-related illnesses: depression, alcoholism, suicide risk, smoking, overeating etc. Participating employees can choose to become resilience facilitators by undertaking a preparatory training class run by Health Department. Following the training, facilitators run the modules for their colleagues, supported by Health Department.

Since the beginning of the Programme, more than 110 volunteers were trained to become facilitators who set up groups to conduct respective sessions for each of the modules. In 2018 and 2019 a total of 314 sessions were conducted for 2,864 people.

At an early stage the Dispositional Resilience Scale (DRS)-15 was used to assess resilience rate. The DRS-15 is the most widely used proven resilience assessment tool used by psychologists and researchers worldwide. Based on this evaluation KPO participating workforce resilience scoring was 30.7, which is an average score for the population of those countries where this methodology was used. Intermediate evaluation scoring at the end of 2019 was 32.5 showing an increase in resilience rate proving that the Programme is effective.

Since facilitator and participants are supposed to directly interact with each other as part of the Resilience Programme sessions, therefore due to COVID-19 restrictions the Programme was suspended in 2020-2021. Attempts to conduct sessions online had limited success, nevertheless it is planned to revitalize the Resilience Programme once pandemic restrictions have eased.

Care for People programme

Care for People (CfP) is a shared organizational value that drives individuals’ behaviors, and attitudes towards HSE and business performance. It is a way of working, where every effort is taken to ensure that every individual has what he needs in terms of both ‘hardware’ (e.g. facilities, equipment) and ‘software’ (e.g. respect, recognition) to perform his job best.

In 2019, with support of Health Department, sanitary inspections were carried out at the workplaces, canteens and accommodation facilities of contractors.

The COVID-19 pandemic impacted the Care for People Programme implementation in 2020-2021. Despite this, regular sanitary inspections to check sanitary conditions of contractor workforce were conducted in conjunction with other Company departments. This obviously played a big role especially given the stressful environment in Company due to the increased number of COVID-19 cases. Six audits were conducted in 2021.

Fatigue Risk Management programme

KPO Fatigue Risk Management (FRM) Programme outlines the management processes that minimize the risks of work-related injury or incidents due fatigue, through:

  • Identifying and recording HSE critical positions where fatigue risk may occur;
  • Conducting a fatigue risk assessment for those identified above;
  • Implementing fatigue risk controls and keeping fatigue risks as low as reasonably practicable (ALARP);
  • Providing the FRM training for individuals identified as operational supervisors. In the future they could make potential contribution when investigating significant and high potential incidents since fatigue is considered as a potential hazard that may result in a risk.

As part of the FRM Programme implementation, KPO introduced an FRM Procedure. In 2019, the following activities were carried out on the Fatigue Risk management procedure:

  • On-line-learning courses were developed and introduced;
  • Workshops for top management were carried out;
  • Pilot project in Transport Department and Operations HSE Department was implemented.

In addition to this, KPO developed on line FRM Training available through e-learning, or face-to-face sessions provided by Health Department. The training is divided into three modules: Introduction to Fatigue, Fatigue Self-Management, and the Principles.

In 2020, it was planned to implement the procedure in other Company departments. The coronavirus pandemic has had a significant impact, however. For instance, in some cases shift personnel had to work longer shifts, which in turn elevated the fatigue risks. In such cases line managers were expected to display flexibility and out-of-the-box thinking in order to allow personnel recover from hectic work schedule. The examples of such decisions — a short day, remote working, planned days off, attraction of additional human resources.

In 2021, the results of pilot application of the FRM were considered in planning of drivers’ work schedules by Transport department. KPO has implemented a Fatigue Risk Management Procedure that outlines the management processes that minimise the risks of work-related injury or incidents due to fatigue.