Society
Safety management
Occupational health and safety
The safety and health of our employees are of utmost importance. To guarantee protection in the workplace and safety at our sites and their environments, high standards apply for the CHT Group.
- Within the framework of the Integrated Management System, we are establishing an occupational health and safety management in the companies worldwide and are preparing for certification according to ISO 45001. The CHT companies in Switzerland, Pakistan, Turkey, and Germany were successfully certified.
- All worldwide employees are familiar with the instructions informing them of what to observe and what to do in cases of emergency. Regular training and exercises are carried out. The present legal provisions determine the content of these instructions reflecting the identified risks at the workplaces.
- We provide appropriate working clothes and protective equipment to all employees worldwide.
- At all sites managers and trained specialists such as occupational safety specialists and safety officers ensure that the occupational safety requirements are implemented.
- Potential safety-relevant events are uniformly systematically registered in a uniform way and evaluated to improve the working conditions and preventive measures being put in place.
- Suppliers and service providers are obliged in writing to comply with the safety regulations applicable in the respective plants before the contract is awarded; compliance with these regulations is monitored during the execution of the contract. Our visitors may only move around our company premises together with employees of the CHT Group who are familiar with the safety precautions at the respective sites.
Requested prevention and information
In 2021, the incident rate (RIR) within the group of companies was 1.6, unchanged from the previous year (1.6). No continuing pattern of incident causes could be discerned in the tracing of occupational incidents. All incidents at work with an absence of at least one day are included. Most of the injuries were predominantly non-chemical, industry-unspecific injuries such as bruises, sprains, cuts, and the like. In the 2021 reporting period, there were no fatalities due to operational reasons. The following graphs show the work-related incidents of CHT employees by region and rate (subject to reporting according to the OSHA regulations (RIR)*:
*Calculated using OSHA’s Recordable Incident Rate (RIR) method = (number of recorded incidents x 200,000/number of hours actually worked). The hours worked of 4,318,200 are calculated by multiplying 1,800 hours worked per year per employee by CHT’s 2,400 FTEs during the 2021 reporting period.
On the base of this development, we are going to increase our international measures for occupational health and safety and further promote our staff’s training in this field. The long-term goal of the CHT Group is to continue to reduce the number of incidents in the workplace and to halve absences from work worldwide by 2025.
Plant safety
CHT products are manufactured in modern chemical plants which are state-of-the-art in terms of safety and control. When manufacturing our products, we respect the prerequisites for quality, the environmental protection, occupational health and safety as well as the energy-efficient use of our plants. To ensure these requirements are met, we maintain an integrated management system that is already fully certified to ISO 9001, ISO 14001, ISO 45001 and ISO 50001 at various sites.
Our goal of certifying all manufacturing sites to ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 was achieved at the end of 2021.
- All plants and processes are continually optimized and technologically advanced worldwide.
- Regular servicing and preventive maintenance guarantee safe operation and compliance with the applicable legal regulations and approvals.
- Maintenance and repair work are only carried out by trained specialists.
- All employees are continuously trained depending on their workplace. At the German sites apprenticeships and further education complies with the prerequisites of the professional associations which are supplemented by an HR development plan.
- Training on plant operation and instructions for correct safety and environmental conduct are regularly carried out.
- As a general conclusion for all sites, we can say that in 2021 the safe operation of the plants according to group-internal requirements and local regulations was guaranteed. All incidents were handled in line with defined reporting systems and procedures including the necessary measures.
In case of incidents in plant safety, appropriate corrective actions were initiated immediately. This showed that the procedures for alert and emergency response and the cooperation with authorities and public institutions as well as the fire departments function reliably.