As an employer, it is Merck’s responsibility to prevent workplace-related illnesses and accidents. For the occupational safety and health of our employees, throughout the Group, we are aiming to achieve minimum criteria oriented to the standards of the International Labor Organization (ILO) and the Responsible Care® program of the chemical industry. Since 1995, the “
EHS Policy” (Principles and Strategies for Health, Safety and the Environment) has applied throughout the Merck Group; it is updated on a regular basis. A “Company Agreement on Workplace Safety and Health Protection” has been in effect for our German sites since 1997. Our goal, redefined in 2010, is to reduce the Lost Time Injury Rate (LTIR – the number of workplace accidents resulting in lost time per one million working hours) to 2.5 by 2015. We want to achieve this goal primarily by reducing the number accidents caused by improper actions.
Occupational safety is an integral element of our EHS management system. As part of this system, we carry out internal audits at the sites on a regular basis. Data are collected monthly via LION, the Merck-specific data management system, and published on the intranet. All companies of the Merck Group are required to report relevant accidents ad hoc to Darmstadt via the Rapid Incident Report System. The accident causes are evaluated centrally, and other potentially affected sites are informed about precautions to prevent similar accidents. Particularly for accidents involving chemicals, there are instructions for emergency medical treatment.
In 2010, we reduced the number of workplace accidents per one million working hours to 3.0 (2009: 3.4). This shows that we are continually making progress in the area of accident prevention through our targeted measures. Despite our efforts to prevent accidents, one accident resulting in death occurred in 2010 – a sales force member in Colombia died of the injuries she sustained in a car accident.
Beyond occupational safety, we offer our employees an in-house program to promote preventive health care. Ergonomic evaluations of the workplace are a task of our worldwide EHS Management organization. We rely on employees’ personal responsibility and support their health awareness through local programs. These include fitness programs, information on healthy nutrition such as “Fit@Merck” in Germany, and early screening measures for diseases such as diabetes or cancer.
To be prepared in the event of a pandemic, we have drawn up a policy and an action plan with specifications on communication and information, behavior in the case of infection, and measures to sustain business operations.
