Responsible beer consumption continued
Alcohol and work
Cool@Work aims to ensure that all employees are aware of the possible effects of alcohol consumption and at ensuring that they drink responsibly.
The ‘traffic light’ model introduced by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) forms the background of Cool@Work. ‘Green’ refers to those employees who drink safely, but nevertheless need to know more about the health effects of alcohol and the Heineken Alcohol Policy. ‘Yellow’ refers to employees who are at risk of developing alcohol problems because of their drinking behaviour or those employees who might experience incidental problems because of the combination of their drinking patterns and their work. Many tools have been developed for training and education for this category of employees. ‘Red’ means that employees have a real drinking problem.
In 2006, specific attention was paid to our approach to employees in the latter category. Although this group is a very marginal one within the company, we believe it is important to help problem drinkers. Management training for dealing with problem drinkers has been developed and implemented, where relevant. A procedure for implementing an Employee Alcohol Counselling Programme was established and introduced by several operating companies.
In our 2005 Sustainability Report, we reported that all operating companies were on track to either implement or refresh their Cool@Work programmes in 2005 or 2006. This objective is extended to 2007. There are a number of reasons for not completely meeting the 2006 objectives in time. Firstly, during the course of 2006 we changed our definitions. Due to these changes a number of operating companies who were originally marked as ‘being on track’ were informed to take additional measures. Secondly, our support and renewed communication by mid-2006 had prompted some operating companies to refine their existing programmes, extending activities into 2007. Finally, our internal Cool@Work audits at the end of 2006 provided insight into the fact that certain operating companies needed to take additional actions in order to meet the objectives. This led to new plans exceeding the deadline of December 2006. Currently, 62 percent of all the operating companies are fully compliant, 13 percent have requested more time to implement their existing programmes and 25 percent remain in need of more support from the Heineken Group.
The training video programme for sales representatives, known internally as ‘Living the Alcohol Policy’, has been translated into Dutch, Hungarian, Russian, Arabic and Polish and has been adapted to the Greek business environment by using Greek Heineken employees as actors. The Greek version has been used as a tool for informing our customers (mainly outlet owners) on our alcohol policy. Education sessions for managers dealing with problem drinkers have been developed in some countries while other operating companies have used existing conferences and regular meetings to address the topic. In France, special training has been developed and implemented in all distribution centres, along with a two-hour alcohol information introduction for new employees. In La Reunion, awareness sessions called ‘Tiredness, Alcohol, Speed’ have been organised and in Austria a new ‘Health management’ project team was established to ensure Cool@Work becomes part of normal business procedures. Lebanon has drawn up a completely new policy and programme for dealing with the green, yellow and red groups and has developed innovative materials such as Cool@Work car key hangers to underpin their activities. These activities, together with many other initiatives, have been documented by Heineken International Health Affairs in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. They have been made available to all operating companies through intranet and through the Global Human Resources Managers meeting that took place in Vienna in 2006.
Our commitment to help employees consume beer responsibly will continue throughout 2007, with a number of specific activities:
- Monitoring the progress made by our operating companies on the initiatives described in their local plans for implementation for 2007
- Continuing the support of our operating companies in all their relevant activities, especially those companies that need to take additional measures.
