USA: Union Pacific Improves Safety Record

Image courtesy of Union Pacific

Union Pacific are now the safest Class 1 railway in the United States, following a fall of 11% in personal injury rates. The number of reportable incidents per 200,000 employee hours has fallen following Union Pacific’s drive to improve employee safety, safety and security in the local vicinity and for customers and by focusing on the implementation of a safety culture throughout the company.

Cameron Scott, Union Pacific Executive Vice President-Operations said:

“Successfully finding and addressing risk in the workplace clearly is having a positive impact, as we seek to achieve annual records on our way to an incident-free environment.”

Part of the innovative approach to improve safety has been a twenty year long programme named “Total Safety Culture”, a voluntary, employee-led initiative to educate employees in safe practices and behaviours, whilst undertaking observations and feedback. The programme has been particularly successful as it enables employees to take action against at-risk behaviours.

Part of the initiative has been the Courage to Care programme, which was introduced in 2012. The programme encourages employees to make workplace safety a commitment, and to take care of each other in the working environment.