Did you know, one of the world’s leading aluminum manufacturers was able to improve its turnover by 5X after implementing this one simple rule of safety?
In the year 1987, one of the world’s leading aluminum manufacturers were dealing with hard times since one of their product lines failed miserably. But in the board meeting, the CEO chose not to speak on this issue but to speak on the on-site safety issue of their employees
As per the company records, every year, there were numerous employees of the organization that were getting injured. The organization claimed that their safety records were better than the countries labor workforce considering that their employees are supposed to work with the metals of 1500° and machines that can rip the labors apart. The CEO mentioned that he intends to make their organization the safest organization to work in the country. They aim to have a zero injury in the organization.
The board meeting was also attended by the investors and it was a surprise to them. Some of them even tried to bring up the topic of how the product line failed and how the organization is going to make up for that. Listening to this, the CEO got annoyed and reiterated what he was trying to explain. He was of the strong opinion that workplace safety should be a priority.
This made the investors think that the safety of the employees is more important to this new CEO of the organization than the profits. Seeing this, all the investors decided to pull their money back.
This initiative dropped the injuries percentage from 1.86 lost workdays due to injuries per 100 workers to 0.2. And by the year 2012, the percentage fell to 0.125. And to everyone’s surprise, exactly after one year from the speech and initiative, the profit of the company hit the records high.
By focusing on this one particular thing – safety, it led the organization to examine insufficient manufacturing process. Finally at the time of the CEO’s retirement, after 13 years, the companies profit was recorded to be 5 times higher than what it was when the speech improving safety measures were given.
Do you see, changing one simple aspect of safety not only helped employees but organizations as well. Those days that were lost due to injuries were reduced which helped the organization improve its manpower productivity along with the improvement in its profits.
Hence, as you see improving and changing one aspect of the organization can bring changes to a lot of other aspects of the organization. So, do you have your safety measures in check?
