We see it as our central responsibility to provide our people at BLG LOGISTICS with a safe working environment. With a focus on accident prevention, we also actively support our employees in staying healthy.

By sharing their experience, dedication and ideas, our employees play a decisive role in our joint day-to-day success. Ensuring they stay safe and healthy therefore has top priority for us. We fulfill this responsibility primarily by focusing on prevention – both when it comes to avoiding accidents at the workplace and providing targeted offers of support to help our employees stay fit and healthy.

Proven systems and clear responsibilities

At Board of Management level, our Labor Relations Director is responsible for occupational health and safety. Our employees can address their questions and concerns in this regard to various points of contact: the HR department, the central company health management system, the social counseling service and the representative body for persons with disabilities are all happy to assist. In addition, intercompany services deploy a company physician at each location who is qualified in line with statutory guidelines and is known to all employees.

In a logistics company, occupational health and safety is of paramount importance. The central Safety and Environment department (PSU), whose employees all have the legally stipulated qualifications, performs essential work in this field with regular facility inspections, workplace and process assessments from the perspective of prevention, and corresponding training courses. Feedback from our employees is crucial to this, because they are on the job every day, directly performing activities and implementing processes. For this reason, we not only involve them in risk assessments, but also encourage them to share any concerns and suggestions regarding occupational health and safety with us – anonymously if they wish. In turn, we provide them with regular and comprehensive information on our occupational health and safety measures, both through meetings at operational level and via our employee app. The safety and environmental protection portal, accessible via the intranet, was set up specifically for employees with responsibility in this area and has already been clicked on several thousand times. It contains binding standards and processes as well as current templates, legal amendments and forms for risk assessments. Based on our occupational health and safety policy, which came into force in 2021, and the supplementary guidelines, numerous management staff have received training in their responsibility for occupational health and safety, including around 50 employees in manager of operations or director of operations positions and a further 30 or so employees within the scope of the “New BLG Managers” training series. In addition, since the reporting year, appropriate occupational health and safety instruction has been available for all office workplaces via the Tutorize platform.

Following the BLG LOGISTICS GROUP with the central PSU department and our company BLG Cargo Logistics, the Kelheim car terminal was certified in accordance with the occupational health and safety management system ISO 45001 in the reporting year. Defined occupational health and safety standards for BLG Germany also make it easy to transfer existing systems to certification at other locations.

Dovetailing processes, tools and measures

Logistics activities are often physically demanding – this is particularly true of activities in warehouses and ports. Wherever, as here, there are interfaces between people and machines, special safety precautions must also be taken. In this context, hazard assessments and regular effectiveness checks are cornerstones of an effective occupational health and safety system. The former provide the basis for specific operating instructions and induction training that support our employees in their daily work. Each location also has its own Occupational Health and Safety Committee, which coordinates the implementation of new measures on site. In addition, alarm plans and hazard prevention plans are in place, which contain important instructions in the event of an accident or fire, as well as first aid instructions.

We are still deeply saddened that, despite all the safety mechanisms and measures in place, two work accidents with fatal outcomes occurred in the reporting year. In the AUTOMOBILE Division, one of our employees suffered an accident while loading large equipment in Bremerhaven, while in the CONTRACT Division, an accident involving an industrial truck at the Krefeld site was the cause. It goes without saying that we supported their families in this unbelievably difficult situation, and also provided financial assistance. In order to rule out such incidents as far as possible in the future, we not only investigated the accident in close cooperation with the relevant authorities, but also, taking the findings into account, ensured our employees received renewed and thorough training in the processes involved. In order to provide immediate information about risks, a safety alarm was also set up in Bremerhaven, and in Krefeld all the industrial trucks in use were checked. Here, we also held an additional workshop on their safe handling with experts from the German Social Accident Insurance Institution.

Reportable work accidents

Number per 1,000 employees

Having already introduced new software in the previous year to map our hazardous substances register, in the reporting year we switched from the software previously used to record and evaluate accidents at work or during commutes to the new Safecon tool, which is specially tailored to our requirements and enables even more precise evaluations of accident events via a direct interface to our HR software. All our sites have access to this system and can retrieve accident information or statistics at any time, which can also be used for short-term briefings or to develop preventive measures.

Across all German BLG companies in 2022, we registered 353 accidents requiring reporting, i.e., leading to sick leave of more than three days. This was a slight decrease over the previous year. Accordingly, the 1,000-employee rate – the number of reportable work accidents per thousand employees – fell from 37 back to the 2020 level of 36. At 35 per 1,000,000 working hours, the Lost Time Injury Frequency Rate (LTIFR), which measures the frequency of injuries at the workplace, corresponded to the previous year’s figure. All accidents that result in at least one day's absence from work are counted. In addition to our own workforce, our accident statistics also include employees who work for us through personnel service providers. Both groups are trained, instructed and kitted out with personal protective equipment in the same way. The latter is not only intended to meet safety requirements, but also to take account of personal needs as far as possible. One example of this is custom-made hearing protection, which is currently being tested at our Bremerhaven site. The safety regulations are also communicated to guests, suppliers and other persons who have cause to visit our locations. Through comprehensive training on topics such as fire prevention or dangerous goods handling, we also create the prerequisites that enable our employees to move safely at their workplace and in the surrounding environment at all times. The training is generally provided by external instructors, for example from the Berufsgenossenschaft Handel und Warenlogistik (German Social Accident Insurance Institution for the Trade and Logistics Industry); depending on the content supported by our central PSU department.