HOW TO START A WORKPLACE PROGRAMME

A Joint Responsibility

The workplace is an ideal arena to address the causes and implications of HIV and AIDS. We spend a lot of time at work and attitude formation and behaviour change are greatly connected to working life and work culture. A key element for success of the workplace programmes is that the identification of needs and the formulation of programmes, as well as the actual implementation process at the workplace, are the joint responsibility of management and employees. Thus, the formation and efforts of workplace committees, with representatives from both management and employees (i.e. trade unions where present), are an essential part of the process. In order to receive co-funding from SWHAP, the workplaces must also have an HIV/AIDS-policy that ensures confidentiality of the employees’ HIV status, non-discrimination of HIV infected employees as well as takes gender issues into consideration.


Activities

The workplace committees plan and implement activities for their employees, often including also the employees’ families and the surrounding community. Although the approach is amended to meet the special requirements and needs of each country and each particular workplace, certain commonalities distinguish the way the workplaces choose to implement their activities. Normally the workplace programmes include the following components:

1. Information and awareness raising schemes for employees and employers
2. Creation of HIV and AIDS committee and policy
3. Voluntary counselling and testing (VCT)
4. Peer education training
5. Healthcare (nutrition, medication etc)
6. Involvement of the employees’ families
7. Community outreach activities and mentoring of other companies


No Need to Reinvent the Wheel

There is no need to reinvent the wheel. If you would like to start up an HIV/AIDS workplace programme at your company bear in mind that there are many companies who already did it, and whose experiences you can learn plenty from. SWHAP is also more than happy to share useful material with you. Attached below you find brochures of different HIV/AIDS Workplace Programmes, as well as other helpful material, such as: brochure on SWHAP, Peer Educator Activity Reports and the SWHAP Assessment Form. The latter served as a nomination form for the SWHAP Achievement Award for Most Comprehensive Programme 2010 and can also be used as a self-assessment tool for workplaces.