Foster Safety by Building Trusting Teams

By Joseph Hagar | President, Chief Financial Officer, Treasurer

Today marks the first day of National Safety Month and puts a spotlight on a value and practice I cherish deeply. I recognize each of us hold people in our lives dear and we all strive to reach the end of each day with sound mind and body. Professionally, I am dedicated to creating and ensuring healthy, safe work environments, and to fostering a culture that ensures everyone goes home unharmed every day.

The foundation for creating safe places is building trusting teams and fostering a sense of responsibility for each other. By requiring open communication, clear expectations and personal ownership of one’s own safety and the safety of teammates, we build a shared understanding and create a culture where team members are empowered to identify risks, define interventions, take action and turn mistakes into learning opportunities. Reinforcing the role of individual responsibility in service to the team in an open, collaborative environment amplifies “We are all in this together” and instills a sense of dedication to safety in each of us.

This dedication to safety is deeply embedded in McKinstry’s culture and has been for the last 60 years. To us, safety excellence is operational excellence, and we continue to innovate our efforts and approach to our work to keep the momentum going. In 2023, we are:

• Leveraging data in new ways to identify trends and take action sooner.
• Applying a new learning management system to improve our ability to train the right people at the
  right time.
• Increasing leadership engagement and more clearly communicating expectations, processes and
  policies.
• Conducting job walks in an intentional and thoughtful manner with safety as the first consideration.
• Continuing our long-standing tradition of celebrating teammates who have been recognized for safety excellence.

I know for a fact investing time and resources in building trusting teams and a safety culture is worth it. With “safety first” at the forefront of operations, I have witnessed higher productivity, impactful outcomes for clients, committed, dynamic team collaboration and, most importantly, fewer safety-related incidents as we work together to solve problems and usher change.

Ensuring everyone goes home unharmed each day is something we are all responsible for, whether at work, at home or in our communities. I encourage others to join me in recognizing safety representatives, project teams, field leaders, tradespeople and each other for valuing and executing safe work throughout our nation every day – not just during #NationalSafetyMonth, but all year long.

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