Taking Responsibility for People

According to our company guidelines, we are committed towards people and the environment. At BASF, economic considerations do not take priority over safety and health issues and environmental protection.

Our goal is to assure that the production and use of BASF products are safe and do not pose health risks to employees, neighbors, customers, and consumers worldwide.

Only one year after the company's founding in 1865, in fact 1866 the first industrial physician, Dr. Carl Knaps, was hired. This date also marks the birth of the world's first occupational medical service in the chemical industry – long before legal obligations were introduced.

Dr. Knaps' mission was to assure the best protection of life and health possible for BASF employees. Until this day, this plays a central and primary role in BASF’s corporate policy, as it has in the past.

In addition, BASF has joined Responsible Care® (RC), a voluntary initiative of the chemical industry, as well as the Luxembourg Declaration on Workplace Health Promotion in the European Union (1997). The philosophy of RC with the clear commitment to sustainable development was defined as a business principle and implemented as a RC-Management-System within the company. Supervisory body for activities in this regard is the Competence Center RC. Furthermore, based on corporate guidelines and internal agreements between employer and works council, BASF guarantees its employees extensive additional preventive measures and medical services.

The "Occupational Medicine and Health Protection Program in the BASF Group" is the fundament of preventive health care within the company and serves to introduce health awareness into BASF business processes worldwide. The program also defines performance standards and provides access to occupational and environmental medical expertise at all times through the Centers of Excellence.

Occupational Medicine and Health Protection face great challenges that come with global social, demographic, technological and organizational changes. Clear goals must be set and necessary measures must be consistently implemented in order to deliver optimal professional work under these conditions.

To this end, we developed the "Vision 2010 – Responsibility for Health":

• BASF is the global leader in the application of modern occupational medicine knowledge and methods to the benefit of its employees, neighbors and customers.
• All the BASF group companies maintain the same high standards of occupational medicine and health protection.
• BASF employees have a high personal awareness of health.
• Work related diseases no longer occur within BASF.

In a transnational company like BASF, many specialized professional units work hand in hand to render visions into success. For that purpose in the areas of risk analysis, health protection and emergency management, a very intensive co-working takes place with experts in Occupational Medicine, Occupational Safety, Environmental Protection, Toxicology and Product Stewardship, as well as with Human Resources, the company Health Insurance, the Fire Brigade, the operating divisions and, last but not least, the works council.

In addition, the Work Protection Committee and the Working Groups "Health" and "Health Surveillance" work cooperatively on a regular basis. Collaborative efforts are also put into organizing targeted preventive health campaigns, which are precisely documented and scientifically evaluated. The BASF Back Pain Project, the Early Diagnosis of Colon Cancer, and the prevention of obesity and diabetes are examples of such campaigns.

Health and corporate culture are always connected with good leadership. BASF introduced as a leadership guideline the BASF Leadership Compass, which is mandatory for all executive staff.

"Health Protection for employees, neighbors and customers is highly valued at BASF. A further challenge is the demographic change. Employees will have to work longer till retirement. With the project Generations@Work we are developing and implementing measurements which will help us to keep our workforce healthy and productive."

Dr. Harald Schwager, Member of the Board of Executive Directors of BASF SE