Health Management

Thanks to better research, structural measures and incidental actions, employee health showed a further improvement in 2007. This became visible in the decrease in the number of new WIA incapacity benefit claimants from 15 in 2006 to 12 in 2007. However, three of these 12 people were declared totally incapacitated. The absenteeism rate decreased further in 2007 to 4.1%. This includes absenteeism of longer than one year. The percentage in 2006 was 4.7%.

Vitality

The following vitality actions were undertaken in 2007:

• Nuon teamed up with Achmea to develop a vitality model involving both Achmea Health & Safety and health insurer Zilveren Kruis Achmea. This will be continued in 2008 with a focus on the key health aspects of exercise, smoking, alcohol, nutrition and relaxation.
• The number of work capability examinations increased strongly within Nuon, so that we were better able to redeploy employees to other jobs within Nuon at an earlier stage.
• In November we held the ‘Make a Move’ action week to encourage employees to take part in the preventative ‘In Beweging’ (In Movement) health programme. About 100 employees signed up that week. 

Absenteeism

We started to renew the Health & Safety focus by concentrating on prevention and on optimal performance from our employees. For Nuon this not only means creating the best working conditions and helping our managers to adapt to their changing role, but also giving our employees facilities to work on their own health and wellness. One of the actions concerned the expansion of the number of external locations where employees can participate (under supervision) in the preventative health programme ‘In Beweging’ (In Movement). We also started to offer programmes aimed at stress prevention. Yoga training has been available to employees for several years now and in 2007 we also started with meditation training. The Customer Care Center, in particular, devoted a lot of attention in the past year to tackling frequent absenteeism.