Why do we have to be safe?
So that we can continue to live healthy lives…to make a living…to pay our bills…to provide for our families, and to enjoy time away from work.
That's it in a nutshell.
Think about it, when there is an incident where someone is injured at a DC or on the road, there can be pain, doctor's visits, and short or long term health effects, all of which impacts our life at home.
KANE is an organization contracted to provide a service. We are the vendor of choice for many customers, because we have committed to high standards that include safety, quality, efficiency, and innovation.
The first tenant of the KANE Code is "Keep Safety First - Your family, your colleagues and your customers count on you." At KANE, we share a common goal with our customers to focus on individual safety, so that everyone comes to work, performs their job, and leaves every day to go home without injury.
At times, we are the largest contractor within a DC. We have a responsibility to set the bar high. We are the standard by which all the others are measured. Our efforts need to reflect our high standards. We cannot afford to become complacent, believing that because we are "pretty good," we can sit on our laurels and not continually strive to be the best.
We have responsibilities to ourselves and to our team mates. Each one of us has a personal responsibility to act in a way that does not jeopardize our health and well-being. Likewise, we also need to be responsible for our co-workers and others around us to ensure that they are not placed in harm's way.
Every one of us has family members and friends who rely on us to come home healthy. Every one of them would be directly impacted if we acted unsafely and, as a result, became injured.
It's expensive to ignore safety. The cost of doing business is expensive enough already. Insurance premiums and fines skyrocket if a business suffers a number of injuries and incidents. Too many of these costs and a business will not be able to operate profitably. If that happens, there's no point of staying in business.
Finally, and most importantly, safety is the only way to operate. Safety is not something that works if you do it half way. You can't be sorta safe"... you're either safe, or you're not. There's no gray area.
Safety doesn't get better by itself - it needs constant attention and care to stay relevant and effective. We need to focus on safety every minute of every day. If we see someone putting themselves or others in harm's way, we should do everything possible to make sure that they are working safely by talking with them, noting it on our BOS/SOS card or talking with the supervisor or manager. All of these actions are the right thing to do.
Remember – at KANE, we set the STANDARD.