Social Benefits

Navistar’s employee empowerment initiative, Vital Lives, provides a comprehensive, multi-disciplinary and integrated approach to health and productivity management.

The Vital Lives initiative encompasses:

• Primary prevention, which seeks to prevent smoking, obesity or other risk factors;
• Secondary prevention, which manages or reduces the risk factors in order to prevent disease; and
• Tertiary prevention, which aims to manage disease in order to prevent catastrophic consequences.

Helping employees maintain a healthy and safe lifestyle minimizes absenteeism, improves productivity, and keeps health care costs manageable for the company and employees alike.

Our comprehensive wellness programming helps employees improve their quality of life by reducing health and safety risks, promoting “evidence-based” care and encouraging smart health care spending:

• Navistar offers each employee an annual, confidential Health Assessment (HA), which identifies ways to address behaviors that increase the risk of current and potential health issues.
• In an effort to engage employees and spouses in proactively improving their health status, the HA was integrated into employee benefits programs. The company offered added incentives for participation, including reduced health care premiums and increased employer contributions to medical spending accounts. This new approach resulted in a 77% increase in HA participation.

Incentive-based wellness programs include Spring Tune-Up, a six-week nutrition program, and Trucking Across North America (TANA), a 13-week competition in which employees use a pedometer to log weekly exercise miles.

The 15th annual TANA program led to record participation, with 30 percent of the eligible population participating and 84 percent of participants substantially completing the program.

This year saw the launch of a new employee initiative, Sustainability PROMISE, standing for Personal Recognition of My Individual Sustainability Efforts. The program encourages employees to engage in safe and healthy behaviors, to choose options that save energy and are environmentally friendly, and to volunteer their time for community-improvement efforts. Based on a successful pilot program at World Headquarters in Warrenville, Ill., and Navistar Financial Corporation’s headquarters in Schaumburg, Ill., PROMISE was offered company-wide beginning in June 2009.

On-site medical clinics continued to make major contributions to preventive care. During 2008, more than 5,000 U.S.-based employees and 1,773 international employees took advantage of the on-site convenience of Navistar flu clinics. Influenza vaccine was distributed to 39 percent of the U.S.-based employee population and 41 percent of our global workforce. Based on data supplied by the Institute for Health and Productivity Management and the Journal of Health and Productivity, the cost avoidance obtained from these flu vaccinations is $363,739.

Navistar plants continue to achieve major safety milestones.

Last year, our Garland, Texas truck plant reached one million hours without a lost-time accident, joining our Conway, Ark., bus plant and our Huntsville, Ala., engine plant. In 2008, our chassis plant in Union City, Ind., reached this one-million-hour goal, while our Huntsville engine plant surpassed two million hours without a lost-time injury.

These programs have delivered significant benefits:

• Measures of employee health and safety have improved over time.
• The company has successfully kept health care costs flat during the past five years.
• Navistar also has minimized cost shifting to employees at a time when growth in U.S. health care costs has outpaced inflation.
• From 1998 to 2008, Navistar employees reduced their on-the-job injury rate by 74 percent.

For the ninth consecutive year, Vital Lives received recognition from the Wellness Councils of America (WELCOA) as a Gold Well Workplace recipient.

Navistar actively contributes to global knowledge on workplace health issues by supporting health-research initiatives that are based on careful analysis of company medical claims data.

Within the past year, more than a dozen staff-authored articles were accepted for publication by peer-reviewed professional journals, including:

• An evaluation of criteria for selecting vehicles fueled with diesel fuel or Compressed Natural Gas, which was accepted by Sustainability: Science, Practice and Policy;
• An assessment of recent human and animal toxicological literature on the non-cancer health effects of diesel exhaust, accepted by Critical Reviews in Toxicology; and
• A critical assessment of health studies on diesel exhaust, which was presented at Symposium on International Automotive Technology (SIAT) in India, and will be published in the SAE Technical Paper Series.

Dr. William Bunn, vice president, health, safety, security and productivity, serves on advisory committees for the National Academies of Sciences, the Board of Scientific Counselors of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), and other groups, and, since 2006, has served as editor-in-chief of the Journal of Health and Productivity Management. Navistar serves as international chair for the Multinational Collaboration, which meets at the White House on a twice-yearly basis, and our programs have been recognized by the International Society for Travel Medicine.

Thanks to the growth of our global business and the increasing numbers of company expatriates in countries such as India and Afghanistan, Navistar is focused on assuring that effective health care is provided to employees overseas – while also addressing terrorism, potential pandemics and other risks.

This year, both Dr. Bunn and Dr. Tom Hesterberg, director, product stewardship and environmental health, visited three hospitals in Pune, India to confirm that high-quality health care is available to Navistar employees working on our Mahindra International joint ventures.

To cope with the increased challenges of international travel, our global security command center links travel booking to health and security systems and keeps travelers informed about any in-country security, political, and medical risks. It also provides a historical trace in the event of an emergency or eventuality such as a natural disaster or terrorist event. Since the system’s inception, the company has experienced no accidents, losses, or other significant incidents.

Reflecting the high standard set by our security operations, John Martinicky, director, global security, received the prestigious Chief Security Officer Award for 2009 from Chief Security Officer Magazine. This is one of many awards that the company and its people have received over the years in recognition of our health, safety and productivity efforts.

While supporting many good causes that help those in need, Navistar and its employees place a special emphasis on education.

Addressing the trucking industry’s chronic shortage of diesel technicians, Navistar collaborates with several high schools to offer special training programs:

• The company’s collaboration with Chicago Vocational Career Academy (CVCA), an inner-city high school on Chicago’s South Side, marked its eighth anniversary in 2008. The three-year curriculum, co-developed by Navistar, has been certified by the National Automotive Technicians Education Foundation (NATEF), and has trained hundreds of inner-city youths as qualified diesel truck and engine technicians. Up to 80 percent of graduating students land jobs and many others go on to successful collegiate careers.
• Navistar continued to partner with the Indianapolis Public Schools (IPS) to provide a three-year diesel technician program at Tech High School in Indianapolis, the first of its kind in the state of Indiana.
• A new diesel education program was developed in cooperation with Thornton Township High School in Harvey, Ill., and will launch in the fall of 2009.

Company technical and environmental expertise addresses the needs of students in resource-challenged public school systems, while mentorship from industry leaders gives students a head start toward a meaningful, stable career path.

In Brazil and Argentina, MWM International engages with the community through such activities as the award-winning Formare School program, which introduces disadvantaged 16- to 18-year-olds to manufacturing, engineering and administrative careers.

MWM also spearheads an award-winning social program, Projeto Crescer (“Project Grow Up”), which has provided on-the-job training for more than 200 underprivileged teenagers in Santo Amaro and Canoas, Brazil. After a year-long training program, qualified interns are hired or recommended to other appropriate employers, and the company continues to work with them for up to a year after they leave the internship.

In the U.S., company experts work to educate schoolchildren on safety on a plant level and through national initiatives, such as the “Be Cool. Bus Rules!” school bus safety program supported by IC Bus.

In addition, IC Bus promotes environmental awareness through its “America’s Greenest School” contest, in which schoolchildren are invited to submit essays about all the things their school does to protect the earth. The winner receives a $5,000 scholarship and earns an IC Hybrid school bus for his or her school district.

Our commitment to diversity brings Navistar a number of tangible benefits, including innovation, high-quality products and services, and improved customer relationships.

In 2008, the company established a Diversity and Inclusion Executive Advisory Board that will enhance Navistar’s efforts by drawing on the expertise and experience of internal and external executives and industry leaders.

The year also saw the publication of an inspiring children’s book, “Brutus the Big Red Truck,” written and illustrated by Kyle Rose and Allan Rea of our Springfield, Ohio truck assembly plant. The book – also available in Spanish – sends a positive message to respect others, play nicely, and notice the good in everyone, despite differences. Using this book as the foundation, employees at Navistar facilities have initiated educational outreach efforts at local elementary schools across the United States.

Navistar continues to focus on achieving and exceeding ambitious spending goals with both minority-owned and women-owned suppliers. In both 2008 and 2009, Navistar was named one of the “Readers’ Choice Best Diversity Companies” by Diversity/Careers magazine, reflecting the company’s support for minorities and women, its attention to work/life balance and its commitment to supplier diversity.