Health and Safety

Complementing its mission to save and sustain the lives of patients worldwide, Baxter works to ensure the health, safety and well-being of its employees. At Baxter, all employees are accountable for safety.

The company encourages employee health and wellness in and out of the workplace, such as by providing free influenza immunizations, subsidizing access to exercise facilities near or on the premises of some Baxter locations, and promoting balanced nutrition. Baxter also is working toward a smoke-free environment at all of its campuses. See Employee and Family Health and Wellness for more detail.

Baxter conducts business worldwide, with more than half of its employees working outside the United States. The company’s operations consist of the following work environments:

• Manufacturing;
• Administrative and sales offices;
• Plasma-donor centers;
• Mobile sales force;
• Research and development;
• Renal-therapy centers; and
• Warehousing and distribution.

Recent trends in Baxter’s operations include increasing automation, facility expansions (especially in Asia Pacific), and a growing remote workforce. These present distinct workplace hazards and opportunities for improvement.

Baxter tracks four main safety indicators: recordable case rate, cases with days lost rate, days lost rate and restricted days rate (see summary performance table). Cases with days lost rate and days lost rate are integrated into senior managers' annual performance management objectives and performance in these metrics impacts their compensation. Baxter also tracks serious incidents and evaluates each one that takes place, to prevent recurrence. The environment, health and safety (EHS) organization reports employee safety performance to Baxter’s senior leadership every other month and to Baxter’s manufacturing and supply chain management monthly. The EHS organization also communicates this performance to Baxter’s Board of Directors.

Health and Safety Program Management

Baxter's occupational health, safety and industrial hygiene functions sponsor teams composed of corporate, regional, site and business-unit health and safety professionals from around the world. These teams set priorities in their respective areas, and establish, maintain and continually improve global programs and initiatives. Each year the functional teams undertake a strategic planning process, and define short-term targets and long-term goals and the tactical plans and resources required to achieve those. They also provide input to Baxter’s EHS Leadership Team, made up of EHS directors and other leaders who establish the company’s EHS strategy, policy (global EHS requirements) and EHS goals. This ensures alignment and commitment throughout the global EHS organization.

Baxter applies the Occupational Health and Safety Assessment Series (OHSAS) 18001 to assess and manage hazards that pose risk to employees. An external auditing and certification body may recommend a facility for certification to OHSAS 18001 following a successful corporate EHS audit. As of year-end 2010, 49 Baxter locations (see map) were certified to OHSAS 18001.¹ See EHS Management Systems for more detail.

In addressing workplace safety, Baxter uses a risk-based approach that identifies, evaluates and prioritizes hazards, and then acts to correct and prevent them. Based on trend analysis of safety data, in 2010 the company continued to focus on slips, trips and falls, as well as ergonomics, as major sources of injury. Working with the Mountain Home, Arkansas, United States, manufacturing site, Baxter’s corporate health and safety team created analytical tools and resources to help sites reduce slips, trips and falls. As a part of the initiative, the team built a website that provides the following:

• Tools to identify the sources and root causes of slips, trips and falls;
• Self assessment instruments;
• Resources and information about vendors that provide solutions to common problems in this area; and;
• The ability for users to search for and upload best practices on this topic developed by other facilities.

For ergonomics, the corporate health and safety team created ergonomic engineering guidelines to promote workstations that best align with workers’ physical capabilities. These guidelines were launched in the first quarter of 2011. In addition, an independent consulting firm completed an assessment of Baxter’s ergonomics policy and programs, including its staffing, to identify opportunities for improvement. The Safety Functional Team is using this input to enhance Baxter’s approach in this area.

!	Certification to OHSAS 18001 is not accredited to the same level as ISO 14001.