Employee Well-being
Centerra is committed to building a strong “People First” culture at all our sites. One of the ways we demonstrated this commitment in 2021 was by focusing on the mental health and well-being of our employees.
Staff at Öksüt spent 2021 building out a robust alcohol and addictions awareness program to
support employees and their families in both the Develi and Kayseri regions. The team in Türkiye
worked with the Develi Municipality and the Green Crescent organization to find ways to support
their “Good and Healthy Generations” goal. The group determined that providing training around
alcohol and addictions – the Addiction Prevention Training Program of Türkiye – would be one
way to help educate employees on the realities of these issues and offer stigma-free resources to
support a move away from substance use. This training will be provided to as many employees as
possible in 2022. While the team at Öksüt hoped to run this program in 2021, high levels of
At Mount Milligan, the HR department spoke with employees who experience mental health challenges and found that local counselling services were quite limited. While Mount Milligan provides access to an Employee and Family Assistance Program, not all employees were comfortable with the phone-in method of support, or with the clinical approach to mental health support. As a result of these conversations a multi-pronged program was established to bring clinical counsellors and alternative medicine practitioners up to the mine site; this program also provided recreational time such as culturally relevant art classes to support employees’ well-being.
Clinical counsellors now visit the site three times per month, and it allows employees to easily access in-person support. Since the program started, we have seen an increase in use of the clinical counsellors’ services. A local Reiki Energy healer also spends one day per month on site to provide services to those employees who are more comfortable with a non-clinical approach to mental well-being. We have found that the presence of these practitioners on site has helped diminish the stigma around accessing support for mental health issues, and more conversations are taking place about the importance of mental well-being.