Image
Competitive Edge
April 2024
Making the Pledge
Our commitment to safety
Jennifer Shea discusses how the new People First Commitments campaign is fostering a culture of safety around Wabtec.
Our People First value encourages employees to put their teams and themselves at the forefront of our operations. Without a safe and healthy workforce, our business can’t thrive.
Recently, Wabtec has been asking our employees to renew their commitment to workplace safety as part of our continued effort to put our People First. Here, Jennifer Shea, Vice President, Global EHS & Regulatory, discusses ways employees can champion safety in their daily work.
Performance goals
A large part of ensuring safety is breaking it down into reasonable pieces. Zero accidents each year is our goal, but attaining that requires everyone’s commitment.
At Wabtec, management starts by setting yearly goals to focus our teams on year-over-year improvement across a variety of key performance indicators. “We have both lagging and leading indicators, such as frequency and severity of injuries and proactive measures of employee engagement, like concerns and near misses reported.”
“While Wabtec’s overall safety goal for 2024 is a 10% injury rate reduction across the company, we measure actions, as well as outcomes, to ensure our goals are realistic.
“Employees can really help us by bringing safety concerns to our attention and by reporting near misses where a more serious event could have happened.” Jennifer says, “By helping to identify hazards in Wabtec’s operations, we can reduce or eliminate risks before a negative consequence occurs in the future.”
Image
People First
Separate from the performance goals are the strategic initiatives, which are fostering a safer and more efficient culture at Wabtec. Jennifer says, “Our People First Commitments is a campaign that we launched at the beginning of this year to really focus our attention on what matters most when it comes to environmental, health, and safety.”
The EHS team broke down the People First Commitments into three simple, yet powerful action statements that employees can remember in their daily work. “The action statements are: I report EHS concerns; I am empowered to stop work; and I am responsible for my safety and the safety of my coworkers.”
Jennifer says the objective is to build a culture where employees actively look out for one another. “We want to foster a culture where everyone feels responsible for their safety and the safety of others.” Jennifer says, “We’re better together when it comes to making good decisions and working safely at Wabtec.”
Image
Speaking up
Image
Safety starts with speaking up when there is a potentially hazardous situation. Jennifer says employees should be comfortable stopping work or making a hazard known when they see an issue. “Hazards can be present in any environment. The great thing about our culture is that people are generally comfortable stopping work and making an adjustment,” says Jennifer. “But it still takes a little bit of courage to say something’s not right.”
Jenifer says diligence goes a long way in preventing hazards, especially when watching for situations that may not seem dangerous in the moment. “I was visiting one of our shops in Brazil and one of the rules is that there is no jewelry.” She remembers that she took off her watch, rings, and bracelet before walking onto the shop floor. “After a little while, one of the employees said, ‘You’re wearing earrings. There’s no jewelry on the shop floor.’ And it wasn’t intentional. I just forgot and I needed a reminder. That’s the environment that we want at Wabtec. It’s okay to raise your hand, ask a question, or remind another team member to work safely.”
Image
Jennifer invites employees to speak up about their experiences, good or bad, related to keeping their teams safe. The core of Wabtec’s People First Commitments is putting people and our safety at the top of our list. “That means celebrating our team members who raise a safety concern, stop work, or report a near miss. It gives us an opportunity to learn. We ask what went wrong? How can we make it right?” Jennifer says, “At the end of the day, we want all our employees to go home in the same condition as they came to work. I’m grateful for the work that our teams are doing to get closer and closer to that vision every day.”