August 25, 2021 Joseph Bolle

Safety Starts With Caring

Often in the world of safety we talk about numbers. Numbers like recordable incident rates, number of injuries, number of days without injuries, etc. At times, talking about numbers can almost cause us to forget why they matter. These numbers that are so often shared and focused on represent people; people who have families, passions, hobbies and lives that they go home to every single day. Keeping safety numbers low matters because we care about each person and strive to make sure that they can maximize their lives outside of work and can continue to be successful while at work.

In recognizing that ​the overall health of our organization includes both the physical and mental well-being of our employees, we launched the Culture of Care, to ensure that our employees incorporate a strong focus on mind, body and soul into their day-to-day lives. The goals and objectives of Culture of Care are to:

1. Support the development of respectful and empathetic employees

2. Foster a supportive, caring and safe environment without fear of being bullied or harassed

3. Enable a positive and stigma-free culture of care where mental health conversations are normalized

The Culture of Care program includes mental health training for all employees and additional training for supervisors and leaders. We also have Culture of Care Champions who receive specialized training to identify and lend additional support where needed. This program challenges and encourages us to better recognize and empathize with each other. It asks us to take an active approach when we see each other struggling. By normalizing mental health conversations, it makes it easier to share our struggles and know we will be supported by our co-workers and leaders. Our Culture of Care creates a workplace where we care about the whole person both at work and at home. Click here or on the image below to see our recent video, where our team members talk about the importance of empathy and respect in the workplace.

Along with creating a more comfortable, caring and understanding workplace, our culture has enabled continued success within our safety program. Our recordable injury-free streak has surpassed 900 days while working nearly twice as many hours to date in 2021. This means that each employee is going home in the same condition they started work not because it keeps safety numbers low, but because we care about each other. Maintaining a strong safety culture is only possible when we truly care about every person that enters an Excellerate facility!