Training in safety, environment and health matters
Leadership performance and the training and awareness of employees play a crucial role in focusing our activities on sustainability. In a special training program we therefore coach all plant managers around the world in managerial approaches to safety, health and environment concerns. The courses are based on Henkel’s health and safety requirements. The course content ranges from risk analysis and managing emergencies to stakeholder dialogue. Besides imparting skills, the plant manager meetings foster better networking among the sites and provide an ideal opportunity to share examples of best practice from the various regions. So far, we have carried out nine three-day SHE Leadership seminars, which were attended by a total of more than 180 site and production managers from Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Americas. The November 2009 seminar in Chicago, USA, was aimed particularly at the plant managers of the National Starch businesses acquired in the spring of 2008. In total, about 80 percent of the worldwide site and production managers have already attended our SHE Leadership seminars.
More safety for employees of contractors
Considerable efforts are still needed to integrate contractors and their employees who work at our sites. The basis for this is the provision of information to the companies and their employees about Henkel’s health and safety requirements, and monitoring to ensure compliance with these requirements. In addition, we involve contractors’ employees to a greater extent in existing training courses and address them through targeted programs. In order to be able to assess the success of the measures, we began, in 2007, to integrate contractors’ employees who work at Henkel sites into the accident reporting system as far as possible, recording days lost due to accidents. Accidents concerning directly contracted employees of external companies are recorded in accordance with the same criteria as for our own employees.