Kynnisferdir – Reykjavik Excursions, go PINK in October and November

All over the world the colour pink in the month of October each year has become a symbol of women´s breast cancer awareness.

At Kynnisferdir – Reykjavik Excursions, our GPN’s member in Iceland, we celebrate the survival of many breast cancer offers and commemorate the ones that are no longer with us. We contribute to a special Pink Ribbon fund at the Icelandic Cancer Society as well as selling the Pink Ribbon broche at our tour desk. We encouage every member of staff, both men and women to have a cancer check and we refund a part of the cost. Last year two of our drivers were diagnosed with prostate cancer during a yearly check up – both had successful operations and are „back in the saddle again“ so to speak.

Cancer is not the only concern we have – on November 5th -9th we had a special health and safety week that involved all our staff. We had First Aid lessons given by Red Cross members, we had a security officer from our insurance firm talking about driving safely and we had a colleague lecturing about the ISO-14001 Environmental Management System which was implemented in 2011. All this is to make the staff better prepared for taking on all kinds of tasks and that both we and they are fully aware of their abilities healthwise. This part of our refresher courses is a part of the European campaign Healthy Workplaces (www. healthy-workplaces.eu). In the Healthy Workplaces agenda the employees have certain duties towards their employer as they are urged to:

taking care of their own and other peoples’ safety and health;

cooperating actively with their employer on safety and health;

following the training they have received for doing their job safely and for using equipment, tools, substances etc;

telling someone (employer, supervisor or worker representative) if they think the work itself – or inadequate safety measures – are putting anyone’s safety and health at risk

We have also been slowly implementing psychosocial risk management which will probably be compulsory for all employers in the future. This will involve employers and workers both in solving problems before they become a major risk.

In Iceland we enjoy the Northern Lights and the Winter Sun while it lasts – the days are getting shorter – in December we expect sunrise to be at 11:00 a.m. and sundown at 3.30 p.m., the sun rising to a maximum of 6°.

We send all our GPN friends our best regards for a happy winter!