Mutual respect, trusting collaboration and open dialog – these values not only characterize our corporate culture but are also firmly entrenched in our Corporate Principles. Other important factors include topics such as occupational safety, health management, diversity and work-life balance. When we take these values to heart and live them out, we can produce key innovations and ensure our sustainable success.
The total number of accidents at BSH is constantly decreasing. Efforts being made to improve occupational safety are impressive: The rate of accidents with a downtime of one or more days was reduced in the units subject to reporting from 7.5 in 2010 to 3.8 in 2017 (referring to 1 million working hours).
Nevertheless, any accident is one too many. BSH’s ambitious goal is a zero harm policy with no employees harmed at all.
Therefore, we established a safety culture within BSH which empowers employees and managers to consciously assume their responsibilities. Concrete duties and obligations can be derived from internal policies and regulations that are binding for all BSH employees.
In order to identify new chances to further improve BSH’s occupational safety standards, we established a specific module in the context of industry 4.0. This module focuses on potential benefits of digitization processes within our company. With this goal in mind, BSH has launched several cross-location projects. These projects comprise for example the use of collaborative robots, exo-skeletons and collision avoidance systems based on radio frequency identification (RFID).
Furthermore, the 8D systematic which is familiar from quality assurance was introduced as a mandatory tool to analyze reportable accidents. Those 8D reports are electronically available as a source of information for all safety engineers.
BSH has received a lot of recognition for its commitment: The occupational safety management systems have been certified in 2/3 of our factories. It is further planned to adapt the ISO 45001 occupational health and safety standard after its release and to extend the certification to 100 percent of factories and R&D centers within the next two years.
A special focus at BSH is on actively promoting the health of its employees, making them aware of personal health maintenance and prevention, and avoiding and reducing risk factors at work. By observing ergonomic findings and standards, BSH ensures the health and performance of its employees on the one hand, and creates the conditions for high productivity on the other.
The production planners, company physicians and safety engineers at BSH work together on an interdisciplinary basis in planning new workplaces and in redesigning existing production lines. To strengthen the impact of our longstanding, company-wide "Prospects 67" initiative, we launched the global "Demography in Production" project in 2013, which envisages specific agreements on future staffing structures and workplace design.
In Germany, for example, new assembly lines ensure that older employees with health challenges can also be successfully integrated into work processes. Depending on the location in question, employees have access to a company physician as well as continuously enhanced health promotion programs.
The offers may vary depending on the location.
Committed and satisfied employees are extremely important to BSH. BSH therefore conducts an international employee survey every two years as a central tool for measuring employee satisfaction. And with great success – the participation rate of 90 percent in 2015 is proof of the very high willingness of employees to participate in future changes.
A monitoring tool for documenting measures and following up implementation progress is available to allow work on improvements to be carried out in a sustainable manner. At the same time, this allows the worldwide exchange of best practice measures. Measures were implemented especially frequently in the topic areas of workplace, work content and work organization. Additional tools, such as feedback for managers or the climate barometer for employees in production, also promote mutual open dialog.
The topic of diversity management is firmly anchored as a strategic sustainability topic in our Corporate Principles with the emphasis on internationality, gender and age. For us it means appreciating all of our employees – with respect to both their differences and similarities. Our conviction has therefore led us to sign the "Diversity Charter" as a public sign of commitment to diversity.
We value the fact that all our employees can organize their home environment in such a way that they can practice their profession free from any other stress. And this applies for every life phase. In some areas, BSH therefore offers additional support to ensure that a healthy work-life balance can be achieved. We essentially want to enable our employees in every phase of life to reconcile private goals and professional requirements.
