Page 24 - SAMRC Annual Report 2024-2025

Learning from SAMRC Leaders Campus Environmental Interventions
As our leaders move toward retirement, we invite We have taken steps to ensure that our campuses
them to present a lunchtime online seminar to the are more accessible and that our built environments
SAMRC community to share their experiences, the are more aesthetically pleasing. At our Ridge
lessons they have learned, and their wisdom. In Road Campus in Durban, we have created more
particular, we ask them to focus on three key issues: comfortable spaces for dining and informal
meetings. In Pretoria, we have provided improved
• Which three achievements are you most proud of?
parking for transportation for wheelchair users. At
• Which three personal capacities have been most all our campuses, there is now at least one non-
helpful in your career success? binary toilet available. We have started the process
• What three pieces of advice do you have for of installing a lactation room at each of the SAMRC’s
emerging scientists/leaders? main campuses (Cape Town, Durban and Pretoria)
for use by employees and visitors. The rooms will
The Learning from SAMRC Leaders webinars have be quiet spaces fitted with comfortable seating,
been popular and is an initiative we plan to sustain. hand washing facilities (or have them close by) and
refrigeration for milk bottles.
Support for transitions from
work life through retirement When not in use for lactation purposes, the rooms
may be used as quiet reading spaces.
After hearing that some former SAMRC employees
were experiencing a degree of hardship in making In response to growing evidence of increasing heat
the transition from work life to retirement, we and heatwaves associated with our changing climate,
initiated group discussions to which employees we are preparing to educate sun-exposed workers
who have one year to go before retirement are on the hazards of exposure to heat, the distinctions
invited. The group discussions focus on two key between the stages of heat illness, from heat rashes
areas of discussion: 1) financial information, and 2) to heat stroke, and providing them with the tools to
the topic of finding meaning and purpose during keep safe during hot weather or heatwaves.
post-retirement life. A specialist on the selected
topic is invited to each group discussion. There has
been a high level of interest in the initiative from
the target group.

22 SAMRC ANNUAL REPOR T 2024-25