Employees

Status of Goals for 2013/2014

With an inter-site employee survey, WACKER aims to identify its organization’s strengths and improvement potential. Furthermore, the instrument is to support managerial employees in improving the performance within their areas of responsibility.
Corporate entity: WACKER Germany
Deadline: 2015
Implementation status: The goal was achieved. The evaluation of all German site results showed that WACKER employees identify with their employer to a large degree.

Reduce accident rate (number of accidents with lost workdays per million hours worked) from 4.7 to 2.0 (referenced to 2012)
Corporate entity: Groupwide
Deadline: 2015
Implementation status: The goal was not achieved. After the accident rate fell to 2.6 in 2015, it rose again to 3.0 in 2016.

“Health culture 2020” project: WACKER aims to develop its corporate health culture further in order to improve staff health and keep employees fit for work.
Corporate entity: WACKER Germany
Deadline: implementation from 2016 on, sustainable improvements by 2020
Implementation status: The project made progress in the period under review. It focuses on four main areas: exercise, nutrition, state of health and prevention. Employees can avail themselves of programs relevant to each of these topics.

New Goals

Reduce accident rate (number of accidents with lost workdays per million hours worked) to at least 1.7
Corporate entity: Groupwide
Deadline: 2020

Reduce chemical accidents with missed workdays to 0 and decrease chemical accidents with the potential for missed workdays by 50 percent compared to 2015
Corporate entity: Groupwide
Deadline: 2020

Future Topics

Inter-Company Manager Program
Since 2017, we have been collaborating with BMW and Munich Re to offer a new program to qualify managerial employees: STEPP 2017 relates the participants’ career development to their personal plans for the future. The objective is to develop new career prospects and strengthen individual suitability for work.

New Variable Compensation Model
From 2018 on, WACKER will gradually be introducing a new variable compensation system for both standard-pay-scale and above-standard-pay-scale employees in Germany. The new system will supersede the existing variable compensation components and replace them with a standardized, market-oriented and transparent methodology. It is comparable with the method of calculating variable compensation for executive personnel (OFKs). At the same time, we are decoupling individual performance assessment from variable compensation for employees on the standard and above-standard pay scales.

Joining the “Equal Opportunity Charter”
In 2017, WACKER signed the “Equal Opportunity Charter” initiated by IG BCE (the German mining, chemical and energy labor union). By joining this initiative, signatories underscore their commitment to advancing equal opportunity within their area of responsibility. The areas in which WACKER has already shown its commitment by means of specific measures include life-cycle-oriented working-time models, the promotion of women in managerial positions, and networks for women.

Measures Relating to Demographic Change
From 2017 on, WACKER is introducing a range of measures relating to demographic change:

  • All employees can apply for a week’s family leave once a year for the youngest child under eight years of age. Employees receive paid leave for this time.
  • Preventive checkups that we currently offer to third-level management employees over 45 years of age (“FK3 checkups”) will be made available to standard-pay-scale employees.
  • Employees over 35 years of age can participate in a health week. This is held outside the company and offers advice on exercise, nutrition and relaxation.

Occupational Safety Programs on Personal Mobility and Disconnecting Power
Due to the high number of personal-mobility accidents, caused, for example, by tripping, slipping or falling, we are launching the “Safe Personal Mobility” program in 2017. Through this program, we aim to inform our employees in Germany about this topic and raise their awareness. It is complemented by site-traffic behavior checks.
In 2017, in order to avoid chemical accidents at our German sites, we are inspecting and improving existing programs on the safe disconnection of dangerous power sources prior to performing maintenance or repair work.

Analysis of Mental Stress
From 2017 on, we also want to analyze and assess job-related mental stress. This applies not only to production-related activities, but also to office work.