Workplace Safety

We completed alignment of our processes and workplace safety standards with the international OHSAS 18001 standard by the end of 2015. Systematic workplace safety includes regular evaluation of hazards and work-area monitoring.

All our employees are given safety training specific to their individual workplace, e.g. in the form of e-learning courses. WACKER Germany, for example, offers 42 online training courses on workplace safety. Topics range from general safety guidelines for office and laboratory workers to instruction on safe behavior in ex areas and the classification of hazardous materials. Each instruction module contains tests that enable participants to assess their progress.

We did not achieve our 2015 goal for occupational safety to reduce our groupwide accident rate (the number of workplace accidents per million hours worked) to below 2.0. In terms of reportable accidents (accidents with more than three work days missed), WACKER’s numbers are far better than the German chemical industry average. The reportable accident rate in 2016 was 1.6. per 1 million hours worked, whereas in 2015, Germany’s BG RCI (the statutory employer liability insurance carrier of the basic materials and chemical industries) registered 9.4 reportable accidents per 1 million hours worked in chemical companies. As in the past, there was not a single fatal workplace accident among WACKER employees during the reporting period.

We also log accidents involving employees of partner companies working on WACKER sites. Groupwide, there were 48 accidents with work days missed at our partner companies in 2016 (2015: 52).

Very few of the accidents at WACKER are chemical in nature. The most common causes are tripping, slipping and falling, and performing manual activities without due care. Not satisfied with our accident rate, we are stepping up our occupational-safety efforts. We are systematically implementing our new WACKER Safety Plus (WSP) program, which incorporates elements of successful safety strategies at sites with particularly low accident rates. Such elements include safety patrols, discussions with the workforce and emergency drills. WACKER Safety Plus has the goal of recognizing and avoiding unsafe behavior – on the way to and from work, in the office, at the plant, when operating machinery, or when handling chemicals.

As part of our “ANSIKO” project on machine safety, experts had inspected around 1,600 machines at all sites all over the globe by the end of 2015. We then used their recommendations to make these machines even safer for our employees.

At its German sites, WACKER placed particular emphasis on reviewing and updating job-related hazard assessments in the period under review. As a consequence, we have improved protection strategies and safety measures in many areas.