WASHINGTON (May 3, 2017) – The American Chemistry Council (ACC) honored BASF Corporation with its 2017 Responsible Care® Initiative of the Year Award, in recognition of the company’s customized environmental, health and safety (EHS) culture change program, the Exposure Reduction Process (ERP).
“BASF’s commitment to employee health, safety and security is clearly an integral part of how it does business and it is evident in the company’s performance over the past four years,” said ACC President and CEO Cal Dooley. “We are pleased to recognize BASF as a leader in behavior-based safety and driving a culture of continuous improvement in the safe management of its products and operations through Responsible Care.”
ERP drives culture change through leadership development and employee engagement, enabling BASF facilities to shift its focus “upstream,” before an incident or injury occurs, to influence at-risk behaviors or unsafe conditions.
“This simple idea—adjusting our behaviors to reduce our exposure to hazards—is at the center of our exposure reduction process” said Derek Fairclough, Senior Vice President Environment, Health and Safety Services at BASF. “It is also how we’re carrying our core value: ‘We never compromise on safety,’ now and into the future, and it is critical to achieving our Responsible Care targets.”
With a focus on the cultural factors that contribute to EHS performance, the Exposure Reduction Process consists of three primary strategies that align with BASF’s Journey to EHS Excellence:
- Mapping the Journey: The facility conducts a quantitative and qualitative assessment to measure its EHS culture. Site-specific action plans are then developed to drive continuous improvements.
- Leading the Journey: Supervisors are evaluated using a safety leadership diagnostic tool, including 360-degree feedback. This helps leaders understand their safety leadership contributions and be coached to adjust their behavior so that they can effectively serve as role models for culture change within the organization.
- Living the Journey: Employees are trained and coached on how to conduct peer-to-peer observations, provide feedback and receive feedback from others. Employees also learn how to use behavioral observation data to identify and remove barriers, potentially preventing future incidents.
The Initiative of the Year is selected by attendees at the ACC’s annual Responsible Care Conference, who had an opportunity to review submissions from four different companies and talk to company representatives on-site at the event.
In addition to celebrating Responsible Care companies and their achievements, the Responsible Care Conference & Expo provided a forum for more than 300 industry leaders to learn from their peers and other experts in the field about best practices to expand environmental, health, safety and security (EHS&S) performance initiatives.