Let’s face it, there are plenty of news stories around about bad safety practices. So, it is refreshing to celebrate those companies that are doing it right and are putting special effort into protecting their employees and the wider community. Hey, let’s chat about the good guys for a change!
The National Safety Council recently held its Green Cross for Safety Celebration in New Orleans, with the awards being the centerpiece. It is the 24th year of the event, which raises money to help the NSC save lives and prevent injuries, with businesses across the US hustling for the main prize in three categories:
- Safety Advocate
- Safety Excellence
- Safety Innovation
The gloves were off, the battle lines are drawn, and the nominees fought it out in an OSHA-compliant manner with full eye protection as standard.
2023 Green Cross for Safety Award Winners
Ready with the drumroll? Here we go…
Safety Advocate Award
Congratulations to Schneider, the truckload carrier that fitted its vehicles with Driver Alcohol Detection System for Safety (DADSS) devices that monitor behavior on the road to ascertain whether a driver is under the influence of booze. With 10,000 deaths due to drunk drivers each year, the company wanted to help finesse the technology ahead of it being integrated into private cars.
Schneider fitted the devices to trucks and racked up 206,634 miles, producing a total of 89,689 samples and 21,784 total sensor operation hours. The guys behind the tech used this rich data to optimize the tech that analyzes the speed, accuracy, and reliability of drivers to detect signs of drunk driving.
The ability to calibrate the device using Schneider’s impressive mileage has super-sped up the rollout of this new, potentially life-saving technology that will benefit us all. Excellent work, Schneider.
Safety Excellence Award
We’re always talking about the steps you can take to a safe workplace. But what if the most important step was to get rid of the steps? Well, that’s what drugstore giant Walgreens has done.
Management at the firm took a deep dive into workers’ compensation claims in its retail environments and found that 40% involved slips, trips, and falls in stockrooms. This gave Walgreens the opportunity to analyze the way it stored its goods and one element that it identified as being of particular concern for safety was the use of ladders.
Cue the company planning a new way of designing stockrooms so that workers no longer had to use ladders, and rolling it out over 76% of stores so far. The result? A 66% reduction in comp claims for slips, trips, and falls within the stockroom areas.
The company continues to push for more stores to adopt the design, proving that Walgreens is committed to finding new ways to prevent old problems.
Safety Innovation Award
When you look after the maintenance and repairs of 90,000 fuel infrastructure assets for the U.S. Department of Defense across remote locations, you have to get things right. And APTIM has done just that.
The secret of safety is communication and, although they are often spread across multiple locations, employees can use the company’s suite of digital tools to stay connected and to coordinate its safety program.
The company’s safety and engineering support teams can interact seamlessly in real-time and provide employees with the latest planning, processes, and documentation to do the job in the safest way possible while keeping clients’ regulatory records up to date. Pretty smart, huh?
APTIM realized a significant drop in incident rates as a result, earning the company this prestigious award.
Conclusion
Well done to these prime examples of good safety practice! We can all be thankful that there are innovative and engaged businesses that seek to make our workplaces a better place to be.
To help your business put safety first, we have a database of interesting and informative safety talks that will help you spread the good word on-site. Browse the talks right now.