Safety programs focus on making impressive milestones, for example, a global company in 2021 hit one million hours worked with no OSHA recordable injuries, starting in 2020. The team worked more than two years (more than 1.2M hours) without a recordable injury. OSHA defines a recordable injury as an injury that requires more than first aid treatment or results in days lost from work. Safety leadership was proud of the OSHA-defined accomplishment. The safety leader explained how an achievement like this is a testament to how every single employee stands behind their core value of safety. The safety leader talked about how everyone was empowered as a safety leader and that employees share in the ownership and commitment of seeing that every employee goes home safely every day. However, safety leaders would have a hard time demonstrating a correlation between ownership, commitment, and no OSHA recordable injuries. The real question that begs to be asked is how did the safety leader achieve those results? How did the safety leader create the safety culture? What safety metrics were tracked?
