The new safety manager wanted to talk about our safety record. I was planning on a pleasant meeting. After all, our plant had reduced injuries by 200 percent over the past eight years. We were ranked in the top ten percent of local chemical plants when comparing our OSHA rate.
But when I sat down in his office, it was clear that he was concerned. We hadn't reduced injuries over the past four years. He was right. The programs we had put in place eight years ago had made significant reductions early on. But after we got down to an OSHA recordable rate of 1.0 to 1.5, we leveled off. What were we going to do, the safety manager asked, to make that next significant improvement in our OSHA rate?