Preventive healthcare and
occupational safety

Healthcare management at Volkswagen is much more than classic preventive healthcare and occupational safety. The holistic healthcare management system that has been in place at Volkswagen for a long time also comprises aspects of work organization, ergonomics, management culture and prospects for all individuals.

The “CheckUp”, a free, comprehensive medical examination, was made available to all employees at Audi in 2006 and at Volkswagen in 2010. This now firmly established tool also helps to maintain and improve employees’ health, fitness and performance. The high level of diagnostic quality of the check-ups is widely acknowledged by the employees: more than 42,000 Volkswagen check-ups and more than 51,000 Audi check-ups have been performed to date.

After the check-ups were successfully implemented at the German plants, the focus in 2012 was on expanding the internal and external prevention offerings that are linked to this tool. The Volkswagen CheckUp was also rolled out on a large scale at Group locations abroad, for example at Volkswagen de Mexico’s Puebla plant. Existing preventive medical examination programs at other companies are being adapted to meet the Group-wide standard for the CheckUp. At the same time, Volkswagen uses improve- ments along the entire product development process to guarantee that the quality of workplaces and the strains on employees that arise as a result of production are already taken into account in the planning and design stages of vehicle models. The common objective is to align the creation of ergonomically state-of-the-art workplaces and innovative work processes, taking both science and practice into account. The deployment of occupational therapists to the production lines means that employees are able to receive advice and guidance directly at their workplace about the more ergonomic implementation of their workflows.

In the course of our management development programs, line supervisors are taught to give stronger consideration in their leadership practices to the link between leadership and employee health. We have also been developing compulsory training modules on occupational safety and introducing them for all prospective managers since the beginning of 2012. Based on the Group occupational safety management system implemented in 2010, all Group brands and companies covered by it analyzed their existing occupational safety organizations and processes. The results are now available throughout the Group in a central database system. This includes the systematic communication of examples of good practice identified in the Volkswagen Group.