“If you take care of your employees, your employees will take care of your customers and your customers will take care of your shareholders.”
– Richard Branson
In other words, taking care of your people is taking care of your business.
Makes sense, right?
Safe, healthy and engaged employees propel your business forward. They give a portion of their life to meet the company’s objectives and (at the very least) deserve a safe work environment.
Does Your CEO “Get It”?
We all know that what leadership values, prioritizes and focuses on is what gets done.
Does your CEO understand the value of protecting and promoting worker health? Is OHS valued, prioritized and focused on as a core value within your organization?
Does your CEO “get it”?
That’s a question the National Safety Council poses each year for companies across the United States. The NSC has recently released the 2014 list of ten CEO’s that “get it”.
Each of the CEO’s was asked:
- Why is safety a core value at your organization?
- Describe your journey to becoming a CEO who understands the importance of worker safety.
- What is the biggest obstacle to safety at your organization, and how do you work to overcome it?
- How do you instill a sense of safety in employees on an ongoing basis?
- How does your organization measure safety? What are the leading indicators that show you how safe your organization is, and where do you see room for improvement?
Contained in their answers is a goldmine of health and safety inspiration. The slides below are their answers to the first question, “Why is safety a core value at your organization?”. If you have a moment, check out the full post on the NSC Safety+Health website for the rest of their responses.
Workplace Safety — Does Your CEO “Get It”?
Why is safety a core value at your organization?
Safety is a core value because our mission is enabled by the talent and hard work of our employees and associates. There is no better way to repay their service than to do everything we can to ensure that they don’t get hurt doing their jobs.
– Patrick Gallagher, National Institue of Standards and Technology
Gilbane has been a family company for 140 years and we embrace all our employees, subcontractors and anyone else on our project sites or in our offices as a part of our extended family. Even a single injury is one too many.
– Thomas F. Gilbane Jr., Gilbane Inc.
There are three crucial areas in which an effective safety program makes invaluable contributions to the Department of the Navy (DON): war-fighting excellence, our moral obligation to our people and cost avoidance.
First, the purpose of DON is to defend the national security interests of the United States by keeping the peace, deterring opponents, and fighting and winning if deterrence fails. Accordingly, the Chief of Naval Operations has identified war-fighting readiness as his highest priority. The simple reality is that the safer a military unit is, the more effective it is in battle. When the equipment is properly maintained, when the people are well-trained and well-led, when cohesive teamwork is universal and situational awareness is high – all characteristics of an effective safety program – a military unit is at the peak of its capabilities. And needless to say, when poor safety practice results in damage to our equipment or injury to our people, we are doing the enemy’s job for him.
Second, our sailors, Marines, and DON civilians are all brave patriots who have volunteered to go in harm’s way – to give their lives if necessary – to defend the values our country holds most dear. We owe a clear moral debt to them to provide the safest possible environment in which to live and work – anything less would be unconscionable.
Third, we live in times of scarce resources in which every dollar counts. Good safety practices save billions a year in the cost of medical care for injury, training of new personnel and replacement of equipment.
– Paul W. Hanley, U.S. Navy
Safety is about protecting people. Whether our employees, subcontractors, client representatives or the surrounding community, PIKA’s respect and appreciation for people is the driving force behind our aggressive pursuit toward a safe and healthful workplace – making safety a premier core value within PIKA.
– Terry M. Kasnavia, PIKA International
Being safe is elemental to everything we do and everything that matters to us. The three core values that shape our conduct around the world balance:
- Our relationships with clients
- Profitable growth
- The people who make us successful
All three values depend on our ability to run a safe and ethical business. Our BeyondZero® program recognizes this; it goes beyond rules, policies and procedures to promote a genuine Culture of Caring throughout Jacobs. We encourage all Jacobs employees to work safely, take an active role in the safety of those around them, and have the courage to intervene whenever they deem something unsafe. BeyondZero is 24/7 for us: at Jacobs, at client sites, at home, and in our communities. We believe we can profoundly influence the safety of our employees, their friends and families, our communities, and our industry.
– Craig L. Martin, Jacobs
Our employees are our most valuable asset, and because we believe that, our commitment is to provide a safe working environment so at the end of the day we arrive safely home to our family and friends. This commitment stems from one of our core values – respect for people. We believe that fundamental to that core value is the necessity of providing all of our employees with a safe work environment.
Our company engages in various production processes, from purchasing cotton to produce yarn for our underwear and apparel products, to manufacturing gymnastic and sporting goods equipment. Many of those processes carry with them inherent safety risks that must be guarded against. We dedicate substantial resources to education and training for our employees to ensure the safety of the workplace. We also engage our employees directly in safety teams to encourage their direct input into health and safety process improvements.
– Rick Medlin, Fruit of the Loom
I believe each employee deserves a safe place to work. It’s also important to embrace a corporate safety culture that will extend to our employees’ friends and families. As a Native Alaska-owned company, safety is part of our heritage. Living and working safely has a direct positive impact on the more than 13,000 Iñupiat people of northwest Alaska who own our company, and those strong roots in safety translate directly to the livelihood of our employees.
Our core safety values put people first. This view is embraced by our leadership and drives our corporate culture. Leadership’s commitment to safety sets the expectations of performance throughout our company to every member of our team. Employees are empowered operationally each day to identify and mitigate workplace hazards. This helps shape safe work behaviors and attitudes. It changes our approach from compliance to commitment each and every day. These core safety values are essential to maintain the highest standards and exceed the expectations of our customers – it’s that simple, and that important.
Our employees are as diverse as the marketplaces we work, both federal and commercial, across 50 states and internationally. We operate as a high-performance team in site support services, construction, mission systems engineering and technology, and technology products and solutions. We recognize that performing work safely has a direct impact on profitability and survivability. It is essential that we constantly focus on safety as we expand into larger and more complex industries.
– Bill Monet, Akima LLC
As a forward-looking energy company, AREVA recognizes that our commitment to safety is the foundation for building and maintaining trust and public confidence. It protects the community, our customers and our people. It’s part of being a good citizen, a good neighbor and a good partner. Safety drives our commitment to operational excellence and delivering clean energy solutions for a better tomorrow.
Safety is the critical success factor for our people, products and services. It defines who we are and plays a central role in everything we do. By instilling a culture with a focus on safety, we are empowering all of our employees to focus on the details and to do what’s right the first time. This leads to improved performance and reliable, consistent and predictable delivery of our high-quality products and services to our customers. At AREVA, we place safety first and strive for excellence in all that we do.
– Michael W. Rencheck, AREVA Inc.
One of the four values at Kimberly-Clark is caring. Caring about our people means caring about their safety. While our products may evolve, the values at Kimberly-Clark remain timeless. For more than 140 years, our values have been woven throughout the fabric of our company. The values of authentic, accountable, innovative and caring describe how we work with and are judged by our consumers, business partners, investors and each other.
As part of selling safety products and solutions, we also must live it in every facet of our company. In order to deliver on our brand promise to create “Exceptional Workplaces,” our work has to be centrally focused toward safeguarding people. People make our workplaces work, and we make their workplaces exceptional through our relentless dedication to create healthier, safer and more productive work settings.
– Elane Stock, Kimberley Clark Professional
Our core values – Safety and Security, Integrity, Teamwork, and Customer Satisfaction – provide the underpinnings of our success and for the overall quality of performance expected of us. It’s our foundation and what we expect of ourselves in pursuit of our vision to be the standard of excellence in managing federal assets by delivering knowledge, innovation and experience in nuclear materials management. Given the nature of our work, which involves handling nuclear materials, high hazards work in laboratories and working in remote forests and swamp locations during South Carolina summers, safety has to be our foremost consideration. We take pride in working safely and securely and are committed to maintaining a world class safety culture at the Savannah River Site.
– Dwayne A. Wilson, Savannah River Nuclear Solutions
