Occupational health and safety

Occupational safety

Numerous preventive measures and guidelines are in place to ensure that staff from both HHLA and external companies, customers, suppliers and visitors do not come to bodily harm, which is a key concern for HHLA. The company strives to continually improve occupational safety in the workplace and considers this an important task for its managers. When examining early indicators that staff would benefit from health promotion measures, psychological stress is also taken into account.

HHLA uses modern technologies to achieve constant improvements: for example, a software-based occupational safety management system is used to monitor all targets and measures.

With the aim of further reducing the risk of accidents and raising awareness of occupational safety among both employees and managers, occupational safety campaigns and workshops are regularly held at HHLA company sites. These cover issues such as fire prevention, hazardous substances and ergonomics. In order to create meaningful accident statistics, accidents at all HHLA companies in Hamburg are taken into account and recorded using a standardised reporting system. These also include accidents not directly linked to container handling (e.g. in workshops). The reasons for changes or fluctuations are carefully analysed in order to quickly initiate structured preventive measures.

In 2019, there were 77 notifiable accidents (excluding accidents when commuting) at the companies in Hamburg in which HHLA owns a stake of over 50 % (previous year: 83). This represents a decline of 7.2 %.

Occupational health

As part of its health promotion efforts, HHLA strives to develop an occupational health management system which reflects everyday needs and to systematically integrate these measures into company processes.

The collaborative project GESIOP (health management from an inter-organisational perspective) was completed in 2019. HHLA was actively involved as a partner in the MEgA project (“measures and recommendations for the healthy workplace of the future”), funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). BMBF funding focuses on developing application-oriented approaches for preventive health-based workplace design and transferring these approaches into practice. As part of the GESIOP project, concepts and tools for gauging the quality of company health management systems are developed. Together with the other project partners and universities, HHLA was then involved in the active project work at the final conference and the final publication in order to share its learnings from the project with a wider public. During the project, HHLA implemented a Group-wide process for assessing the risk of psychological stress, followed by a method for testing the effectiveness of measures, which was reviewed in a pilot project. The findings were used to create binding, Group-wide procedural instructions that have been valid throughout the Group since 2019. Other partnerships with companies from the health care sector were also intensified as a result of the project.

A further example of how HHLA promotes good health is its partnership with the start-up 25ways, which has developed a digital mobility platform. By supporting this pilot project, HHLA is promoting the use of health-oriented and environmentally friendly modes of transport for commuters. A range of options, such as free trial periods for various types of bicycles, encourages employees to embrace new and healthier behaviour. The company also supports the “Cycle to Work” campaign of the German health insurer AOK.

Furthermore, with the aid of targeted communication and information strategies, HHLA actively promotes existing health care services, such as social counselling and flu vaccinations. This has led to increased awareness of these services among employees.

Already well-established at all company locations, HHLA’s highly popular Health Days focus on different topics each year with new information and ideas to try out.