Global Safety Initiative

The current management systems, rules and guidelines are important for the achievement of our goals for safety, security, health and environmental protection. The function of our leaders and each individual employee as role models plus the active commitment for safe behavior are just as important to us as open dialog, in order to benefit from experiences and learn from mistakes. The essence of our global safety initiative, which started in 2008, is to make this visible, to provide constant motivation in order to create conditions for the continuous development of a safety culture.

For example, we provide our employees with a global platform that includes successful practices. We encourage and develop the conditions for safe behavior with local, unit-specific and global events.

In Asia, the safety initiative is implemented by the "C.A.R.E.-Initiative" (Communication. Awareness. Responsibility. Excellence), in South America through "Cultura de Segurança", in North America by "Journey to EHS Excellence" and by the "Safety Champions Initiative" in Europe.

Since 2012, the “Global Safety Days” have been held in all BASF regions at the same time. Under the motto “Join in”, employees and contractors in Asia, North America, South America and Europe make their own contributions, participate in workshops and exchange information on topics of safety, security, health and environmental protection.

With around 1,000 activities at around 325 sites, our 2018 Global Safety Days focused on enhancing everybody’s awareness to spot risks before they become hazards - whether at work or at home. At the Ludwigshafen site alone, around 7,500 employees and contractors registered to participate. This involvement and lively discussion make a major contribution to our safety culture. During the “Global Safety Days 2019”, BASF honored the winning teams in all regions with the Safety Team Awards for exemplary projects of team-oriented safety work for the sixth time.

As part of the Safety Champions initiative, we opened at the Ludwigshafen site a training center in 2010. Here, interactive and practice-related modules are offered and can be combined to build up target group-specific qualification concepts. The training center provides a platform for highly practice-related instructions on diverse safety and security topics. In 2019 around 21,000 employees made use of this opportunity for training.

Embedded in the Safety Champions initiative, units conduct structured self-assessments of their safety activities and define improvement measures and goals. Introduced in 2010 in Ludwigshafen, we made user-friendly enhancements to this approach in 2016. Implementation was largely completed in Europe and South America.