By Braun Intertec | June 5, 2024

This month Braun Intertec and our clients celebrate National Safety Month. However, when you live safety as a core value like we do, every month is safety month. Nevertheless, National Safety Month is a great time to take annual stock of the state of safety at Braun Intertec. 

Over the last three years, injuries at Braun Intertec declined significantly. This is the result of several years of top-down commitment and investment, as well as grassroots accountability for personal choices regarding safety across the organization.

How we made safety a way of life

Some of the systems we have invested in over recent years include:

• Safety onboarding and annual safety refresher training programs
• Safety observation program; we call it our Near Miss PLUS program where employees report experiences where they “saw something, said something, and did something” relative to an unsafe condition, at-risk behavior, or safe behavior
• GPS driver monitoring program
• Weekly and monthly safety messages and meetings
• Clear expectations, constant support, ongoing feedback, recognition, and coaching (i.e., a comprehensive, healthy approach to accountability)
• Partnership with a third-party resource to provide employees with real-time options regarding injury triage and treatment
• Our constant emphasis on—and recognition of—employees who exercise their stop work authority

We also targeted specific hazards that contribute to incidents by focusing on safe practices associated with driving, walking and working surfaces, lifting, ladder use, all kinds of weather-related hazards, tasks with potential repetitive motion issues, and more.

Our results

Recordable injuries are down across the board and momentum continues to build to lock this performance in with every new employee, project, and client.     

Our goal has been that our employees would go home better than when they arrived at work each day.  When we say “better” we don’t mean just physically healthy, that’s a given. We want employees to go home with an improved attitude and deeper commitment to safety in everything they do, at work, at home, at play, and in service in our communities.

“We hear countless stories about the ripple effect of safety as a core value at Braun Intertec from so many of our employees,” says Rob Chvatal, Vice President of Safety. “As a result of working safely every day, our employees bring that same mindset home and look for ways to make their families and communities safer.”

During National Safety Month, we hope our clients feel the impact of our improved safety performance firsthand in their work with Braun Intertec employees, as well as its ripple effect across an entire project.