Safe work

Why is HSE so important for KWS?

Sebastian Schwerdtfeger: The well-being of our colleagues has top priority at KWS. This means that there must be safe working conditions worldwide and that work must not make employees ill or expose them to acute hazards that might result in injuries. As part of its sustainability strategy, KWS has therefore committed to the goal of reducing occupational accidents in the long term and continuously improving working conditions at the KWS Group.

In which areas can and does KWS want to improve?

Olivier Cottet: KWS aims to improve occupational safety in all areas in the long term. Since the breeding stations are a focal point for accidents due to various sources of potential hazards, more intensive measures are being taken here to raise awareness of accident prevention.

How does KWS intend to achieve its goals?

Olivier Cottet: Over the course of this summer, KWS is launching a global HSE campaign. This includes various measures such as changing posters, permanent information boards at selected locations and instruction of the teams by managers. Occupational health and safety are key management tasks.

How is it ensured that occupational safety can be improved in the long term?

Sebastian Schwerdtfeger: Guideline 1.2.6 Health, Safety and Environment acts as a Group-wide framework for operations at our locations. In it, we define basic requirements relating to environmental protection, occupational health and safety, emergency preparedness and risk prevention.

Among other things, the guideline defines the role of managers in implementing HSE requirements. It also calls for incidents relevant to occupational health and safety to be recorded in a central database.

In order to make our locations comparable with one another in terms of work safety, data relevant to occupational health and safety at the KWS Group is now recorded centrally. In the fiscal year 2021/2022, a key figure on accident frequency was published for the first time with the recorded data. The database provides information about where individual locations and companies stand in terms of accident frequency and allows conclusions to be drawn about core accident prevention issues.

Since the end of the coronavirus pandemic, we have intensified auditing of the implementation of HSE requirements internationally in order to raise awareness of the issue among colleagues in the local companies and, if necessary, to offer assistance with implementing them.
In the future, the results of internal and external audits, data recording of sustainability data, and data from a regular self-disclosure by the locations will be incorporated into a central assessment, thus enabling decision-makers to obtain a holistic picture of what potential for improvement exists. |