Confessions of a Global Mobility Manager: Sexually Transmitted Diseases and Olympic Fitness
By?Ms Sterious
?We need to talk about sexually transmitted diseases?
?Come Again? I spluttered, immediately regretting my choice of words!
?We need to talk about the high rates of Sexually Transmitted Diseases of our assignees returning from XXXXX.?
More than just a great salary
And so began my conversation with our Occupational Health Director.? It transpired our assignees going to said location were acquiring more than just a decent salary. This large group of assignees were working and living on a large extraction site in an extremely remote location. In their defense there was not much to do in their limited down-time as security was tight and it was not an option to leave site unless there were very particular circumstances! It is a tough environment living on camp, alcohol and recreational drugs are banned, the work is hard, the hours are long. Meals are at set times, assignees are away from family and friends, the climate is stifling and the environment can feel very claustrophobic. It can be a very isolating experience and it is not an assignment that is suited to everyone. Because of this all assignees being sent into this particular location undergo full psychological assessments as well as medical assessments. Interestingly more people than you would expect fail the psychological assessments.
Most of the assignees are on a 28 day on / 28 day off rotation which certainly helps to alleviate the stress of the environment but while on location it is easy to see that there is not much distraction for the assignees apart from each other! Needless to say Occupational health did not give me specific details but I have to admit it was VERY hard not to wonder who exactly had an STD and more disturbing what STD they actually had. ?Imagining the terrible afflictions that our lovely assignees were now enduring certainly put me off my food for a short while. My other half was very alarmed when I asked him if he know what the symptoms of Chlamydia were. No?
How about gonorrhea? Nope?
Syphilis? ?He now looked terrified.
Occupational Health Crisis Meeting
I really was unsure how to handle this one so the Occupational health director and I decided to sit down for a bit of a crisis meeting. She was concerned about the high number of cases being diagnosed as well as the high number of recurring cases. I was concerned about the low levels of awareness and the wider consequences for spouses and partners of our assignees. I tried not to think of a more sinister potential issue which was that some or one of our employees knew they had STD?s and actively passed on their STD?s to their colleagues willingly and knowingly! The Occ Health Director assured me these dark thoughts were more likely attributable to my overactive imagination.
We debated possible solutions. We brainstormed some ridiculous ideas such as installing wardens in the camp site accommodation, tagging assignees, locking the accommodation doors overnight! Of some of the more sensible ideas we wondered if we should run a course on sexual health? But would this been seen as overbearing interference from their employer? Should we include protection in the pre-assignment packs? Would this offend some employees? Was it even our responsibility to manage the sexual health of our assignees? ?Ordinarily it would not but the instances were coming from this one particular camp run by the company so we had to do something.
Back to University
We decided raising awareness was going to be out first tactic. So we went back to basics, it reminded me of sex education at school. We put up posters in the bathrooms of Head Office about safe sex. We had more posters installed across the site?s staff accommodation. We put large baskets of condoms EVERYWHERE, which reminded me of Fresher?s week at Uni. Like decorative pots of pot pourri there was baskets in the toilets, in the sleeping quarters, in the gym shower room. You could not move without catching sight of those brightly coloured packets. Much tittering and giggling was had by all employees but at least it got people talking and got the message across.
We then introduced a sexual health briefing as part of the pre-assignment medical. This detailed how to play it safe and how to spot symptoms and what to do if an assignee thought they were at risk.
Let Us Entertain You
We then took a view that the company needed to do more to improve the entertainment for camp residents. We installed ping pong tables, a juke box and video gaming rooms. We ran movie nights and installed Skype and face time on all the assignees company devices. We overhauled the gym equipment, and replaced all the 1980?s equipment with flash treadmills, cross-trainers and rowing machines. We ran competitions based around gym activities, generating particular interest in the Site Olympics, which Team GB won.
And do you know what, it worked! Over the subsequent months since the instances of STD?s has dramatically reduced. It took some time but eventually cases began to decrease and recurrence was infrequent, our medical costs went down and there hasn?t been a flare up for some time. As an additional benefit we got people interested in their health and also their fitness levels and would you believe there was even an improvement in site production!
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