Occupational
Health & Safety

Shared Responsibility

At Whirlpool Corporation, we remain committed to continuous improvement in our Environment, Health, Safety and Sustainability (EHSS) programs, delivery and results. In 2020, we launched “We Care,” our commitment to protecting our employees, preserving the environment, acting sustainably and engaging all employees as a shared responsibility.

Our global EHSS function enhances our strategic planning and prioritization process through team engagement and tools such as the Strength, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT) analysis, risk ranking and the Responsible, Accountable, Consulted or Informed (RACI) matrix. This also adds rigor to our EHSS efforts and ensures we are aligning EHSS priorities and objectives.

Establishing Core Competency Teams

In 2020, we established global EHSS Core Competency Teams (CCT) to better connect regional and global subject matter experts, enabling best practice sharing and optimization of workstreams. Among them is the Safety CCT, consisting of cross-functional representatives from Engineering, Operations and EHSS, who partner to implement approaches and tools to prevent incidents and injuries associated with Whirlpool Corporation’s highest potential consequence activities, namely, machine safety. Moving forward, this team will expand Latin America’s “Attitudes for Life” campaign.

Attitudes for Life

Attitudes for Life was created to instill an EHSS awareness mindset among employees through immersive experience-based learning, including using scenarios to teach employees about risk and consequences. As a result of our focus on machine protection, workplace improvements and Attitudes for Life, the Latin America Region experienced a serious injury rate reduction of 57% compared to 2019.

Additionally, we continue to secure and maintain outside recognition for EHSS Management System implementation with 69% of our manufacturing plants globally certified in OHSAS 18001.

Activities covered by the EHSS Management System include all production and non-production activities at the manufacturing sites. Legal and other EHSS obligations are documented by each site and certified during audits.

Risk Analysis, Regulatory Compliance and Governance

Building on our efforts from 2019, we expanded our usage of the WCM risk analysis tools and identification of hazards in 2020, assigning countermeasures based on the hierarchy of controls to reduce injury risk. Now all sites have established action plans to complete 100% of required risk assessments. These risk assessments will be revisited periodically to verify that controls are sustained in place, as well as following any injury event to assess if further countermeasures may be needed.

In 2020, we launched a new digitized country-specific regulatory compliance self-assessment process, enabling better visibility to regulatory compliance status at each factory and growing the competency of our global EHSS professionals. Additionally, we continued our Global Governance Audit process, completing nine audits over the course of the year, focused on key Health & Safety topics, as part of a three-year review cycle. Audit content includes both internal requirements, such as procedural implementation effectiveness, as well as regulatory compliance obligations. All Risk Assessment countermeasures and follow-up actions required from regulatory self-assessments and/or Global Governance audits are documented and tracked to completion.

Preventing Injuries and Illnesses

Whirlpool offers a variety of on-site health services that help employees get care at work, and also help them navigate the external network. All of our U.S. facilities have on-site health clinics. Though the main focus is occupational health care due to Whirlpool being in the manufacturing industry, they do provide some non-occupational primary care services like administering vaccines and completing biometric screenings for employees. Within the clinic, a pharmacist comes on-site once a week and is available to meet with employees to talk through any questions they have about the medications they are taking, adherence, or side effects.

Whirlpool also offers on-site health coaches at all of our U.S. facilities. The health coaches are staffed full time and are available to meet with employees and their families to help create effective wellness plans and sustainable habits to improve employee health. They also help employees navigate the health care system—whether it be escalating their case to our nurse advocate, connecting them to expert medical professionals, or helping employees and their families find primary care providers in their area.

Our Global Employee Assistance Program provides 24/7 counseling and well-being support that targets health risks such as anxiety, depression and other mental health needs. We facilitate access to these services through dedicated websites and portals.

In 2020, Whirlpool Corporation partnered with our Occupational Health clinic providers, Medical Director, Human Resources, Operations teams and local Health Departments to successfully implement illness prevention strategies such as employee temperature screening, on-site testing clinics and campaigns covering a range of topics, from proper mask wearing to hygiene, handwashing and flu vaccination reminders.

We address ergonomics and repetitive motion injuries on an ongoing basis through robust employee onboarding processes, job rotation and engineering controls implementation. In our U.S. facilities, we have engaged Humantech to help standardize and streamline our approach to ergonomics assessments. In 2020, we experienced a total of 518 OSHA recordable injuries, nine of which were classified as Whirlpool Corporation Serious incidents. While we recognize that even one injury event is too many, we learn from every event as we progress on our journey to maintaining zero incidents.