Social

Occupational health and safety

Maintaining an engaging and safe working environment both at sea and on shore, is a necessity for an efficient, sustainable and profitable business.  We take pride in offering an engaging and safe workplace. In addition to continuously improving our health and safety management systems and employee behaviours, our aim is to have zero work related fatalities or other work-related harm to our people.

To achieve this, we maintain ambitious health and safety standards to prevent hazards and incidents for all our employees and other parties working on behalf of the company. The overall responsibility for health and safety resides with senior management and the board of respective entities in Wilhelmsen. Relevant departments, including QHSSE, HR and operational teams manage and monitor the day-to-day implementation.

All employees in Wilhelmsen are responsible for reporting incidents, near-incidents, safety breaches and hazards. Employees are encouraged to report without fear of retribution i.e. a no-blame culture. Employees can also use our global whistleblowing channel.

Incidents are evaluated and analysed by the QHSSE departments, and important lessons learned are communicated amongst the functions and relevant business units through safety bulletins and meetings.

Wilhelmsen has implemented a variety of initiatives to maintain a healthy work environment, for example focusing on the monitoring and reporting of absence cases, health and wellness awareness events, annual health checks, employee assistance programme, adapted working hours, social activities, employee engagement surveys and opportunities for personal development.

Equality, diversity, and inclusion

Wilhelmsen group is diverse with operations in more than 60 countries and representing employees from 85 nationalities. Despite an ethnically diverse workforce, where engagement survey results support a culture characterised by zero-tolerance for harassment and discrimination, where differences are valued and respected, the percentage of females in the organisation has been stable for several years, suggesting increased attention is necessary. We believe an even more diverse workforce is valuable for several reasons:

• It allows us to access the broadest talent pool possible
• It enables better decision making and increased value creation
• It is part of our social responsibility, contributing to higher workplace participation

We have embedded an ambition in our long-term strategy to have 40% of each gender represented in the top three level of management onshore and in internal boards.

Competence development

To truly live our vision of shaping the maritime industry and building on our values, learning and innovation and teaming and collaboration, we consistently work to stay relevant and ensure we have the skills and competencies necessary to create business value today and in the future. Our approach to learning includes three simple words – learn, apply, and share. By learning something new, applying it in our work, and sharing it with our colleagues, we know we create greater business impact. A learning organisation with motivated employees contributes to efficient operations and has a positive effect on financial performance.

Personal development plans are integrated in our performance appraisal and review processes. Employees are encouraged to spend a minimum of eight hours of training. For most of our employees, the number of hours is a lot higher. In addition to formal training, employees also conduct mandatory training, and most will learn and apply new things as part of their continuous improvement and development of their working day.

Human rights and employment conditions

We support and respect the protection of internationally proclaimed human rights. As an employer, we uphold the freedom of association and recognise the right of our employees to collective bargaining. We are also committed to eliminating all forms of forced and compulsory labour including child labour, modern slavery, and human trafficking, and to eliminate discrimination in respect of employment and occupation.

Local and internationally accepted labour and human rights form the basis for how we treat our employees. To ensure decent working conditions, our People Policy states that we will:

• provide an engaging and safe work environment with equal opportunities for all employees to contribute and create value
• offer a professional and consistent management of our people, and
• offer employees possibilities to grow and excel

Our People Policy also includes our ambition to engage with suppliers and customers that demonstrate their commitment to the UN Global Compact or similar through transparently reporting on their environmental, social, and governance practice and performance and/or contribute to accelerate such a commitment.

Local communities

We care for the local communities in which we have operations and as a responsible employer it is important for us to give back to the communities. Each year, our employees are therefore invited to make a difference in their community by applying for “Do good locally program” funding on behalf of a local not for profit organisation.

Contribution to the SDG targets