Keeping Employees Healthy

TRW is committed to providing a safe and healthy working environment for every employee. The company's health program includes minimizing employee exposure to unsafe conditions, using ergonomic design in work stations, helping workers rehabilitate from job-related injuries and recover from illnesses and, most recently, preparing workers in the event of an infectious disease pandemic. The key is to identify and then implement sustainable practices that help create a safer future.

Ergonomics

TRW's Ergonomics Program prevents injuries and reduces musculoskeletal risk. The program also creates an environment that allows employees to optimize their performance.  Ergonomics experts use systematic, progressive assessment tools to ensure that workplaces are designed to integrate task needs with employee capabilities.

Through more than 30 ergonomic training sessions and workshops in 12 countries each year, TRW has prepared engineers, Lean Promotion Officers, and site HS&E professionals to implement ergonomic improvements.  This reliance on peers to educate and enforce has proven successful for TRW. By mid-2007, repetitive injury incidents have declined.

TRW employees have also been trained to use tools to identify and minimize ergonomic risks during the product design phase. By evaluating ergonomics during the design phase, issues can be reduced or avoided in the workstation design process. The end result is a more comfortable work environment and increased production efficiency.

Return To-Work (RTW) and Transitional Alternate Duty

TRW's Return To-Work (RTW) program provides support for an employee's safe and timely return to work after a work-related injury or illness. These programs promote rehabilitation and facilitate recovery of affected employees.  The Transitional Alternate Duty program emphasizes the ability of the employee to resume the same or similar value-added duties performed prior to the injury or to perform alternate duties and tasks.

Pandemic Preparedness

TRW developed a Pandemic Preparedness Plan in 2006 to assist managers in the event of a global avian influenza (H5N1 virus, also known as bird flu) threat.  The TRW Plan includes guidelines developed by the World Health Organization (WHO) for identifying and responding to pandemic phases and increasing risk. The Plan also outlines risk-reduction activities that employees and their families can practice at work and at home.

The Plan is designed to help minimize impacts to the company by including steps for business continuation. There are instructions for forming facility planning teams, ordering equipment facilities will need to decrease the danger of spreading contagious diseases, and alternative work practices.

Many of the business continuity measures described in the Plan are useful beyond a disease pandemic and could be effective in other global health emergencies.