Occupational Safety

Occupational and plant safety are vitally important for WACKER. That is why WACKER defines safety targets together with its executives (upper and middle management) in Germany during its annual target-setting process. Systematic safety management includes regular evaluation of hazards and work-area monitoring. We align our processes and standards relating to occupational health and safety with the international ISO 45001 standard. Our site in Jincheon, South Korea, has been certified to this standard.

All our employees are given compulsory safety training tailored to their particular work areas. WACKER Germany, for example, offers over 40 online courses on occupational safety issues. Topics range from general safety guidelines for office and laboratory workers to instruction on safe behavior in potentially explosive atmospheres and the classification of hazardous materials.

The trend in occupational accidents is one of the most important non-financial performance indicators. We have set a goal of keeping the number of occupational accidents to below 2.0 per million hours worked groupwide. The Group’s accident rate improved slightly in the reporting year, with 3.3 occupational accidents per million hours worked, compared with 3.5  in the previous year. Unlike the previous year, however, the Group’s overall improvement in the accident rate was due entirely to improvements in Asia and the Americas, whereas the accident rate in Europe increased in 2023 to 4.6 (previous year: 4.3). As such, our Asian sites in particular continued to report substantially fewer occupational accidents than our sites in Europe. Very few accidents at WACKER involve chemicals. The most common causes are tripping, slipping, falling and lack of care when performing manual activities.

We are never satisfied with our accident rate, and we regularly update our occupational safety initiatives. In order to reverse the trend in Europe, we have continued to pursue safety initiatives begun last year at our Burghausen and Nünchritz sites, which include education days, inspections and checklists. We have also extended these initiatives to other German sites as well. We raise awareness of employees to help them identify and avoid unsafe behavior through our WACKER Safety Plus (WSP) program, in which we build on elements of successful safety strategies at sites with particularly low accident rates – such as safety patrols, emergency drills and holding discussions with the workforce. Employees in Germany can use our idea management system to quickly and easily report safety-critical situations. As a result, hazards can be identified and eliminated at an early stage before they lead to an accident. We give special recognition to plants and their employees for sustained periods of time without a reportable accident. Occupational Safety Committee meetings (ASAs as defined in Section 11 of the German Safety at Work Act (ASiG)) are held quarterly at all of our German sites, in order to discuss industrial safety issues together with company and employee representatives.