Celebrating Safety Month at T5:  Employee Well-being is Our First Priority

Forever Safe is more than a motto – it represents a mindset and culture of safety at T5. Every June, National Safety Month serves as an annual reminder to assess our working conditions and take the steps necessary to further enhance this environment for our team.

Throughout the month, we’ll highlight how safety is in our DNA at T5 and how others can create a safety-first employee culture at their workplace. And we will introduce you to our company’s leader in this effort. 

The History of Safety in the Workplace

Since 1996, the National Safety Council has celebrated Safety Month every year by promoting safety education, awareness, training and best practices to prevent unintentional accidents and deaths in the workplace, in public, on the road and at home. Every week of June features a different theme, with this year’s themes including emergency preparedness, slips, trips and falls, heat-related illness, and hazard recognition.

Safety Month highlights conventions that evolved over the decades from the Industrial Revolution, during which child labor laws, the modern forty-hour workweek and safety procedures were introduced, to the establishment of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) in 1970 to regulate the organizations’ working conditions to protect employees. Now, safety focuses not only on the physical well-being of employees but also their mental and emotional well-being, which goes hand-in-hand at their workplace.

This observance  is a reminder that accidents and hazards are preventable with proper precautions and awareness. It aims to educate individuals about potential risks and empower them with the knowledge and resources to make informed decisions. By emphasizing safety practices, we can minimize injuries, protect lives, and reduce the burden on healthcare systems. 

A Culture of Safety at T5

It has been nearly a year since  the T5 Facilities Management and Construction Services teams reached three consecutive years without a lost-time incident and over two million hours without an OSHA Recordable injury. This year we’re ecstatic to announce that we are approaching 3 million hours worked without a lost-time accident across both T5 and our customers’ global portfolio of data centers and construction sites.

Again, we credit this success to our team, which fully embraces the Forever Safe attitude and proactively champions safety procedures. Gerald McKie, our Global Vice President of Environmental, Health and Safety, leads this effort.

During the past three years, Gerald has directed our safety initiatives by providing monthly safety committee meetings and internal communications with consistent messaging for risk assessment, emergency procedures, and maintenance reporting, empowering our T5 family to engage in safe activities and comfortably raise the alarm when identifying potential hazards. 

These ongoing best practices are in addition to other core processes to ensure safety during every task. Before work begins on any project, the team establishes a Method of Procedure (MOP) statement and Job Hazard Analysis (JHA), which allows employees to determine the potential hazards of each job before work begins. Regardless of their title, every employee has Stop Work Authority to call a halt and address a potential job risk. 

“There is no rank in the room regarding safety,” Gerald said. “You can’t be safe enough.”

This consistent and positive reinforcement encourages employees to play an active role in meeting safety guidelines and procedures. Along with ongoing training and communication, safety is part of the DNA at T5 and something vendors can expect when working with the team.

Forever Safe

Organizations can create a secure work environment where employees can thrive by cultivating a safety culture, providing adequate training, assessing and mitigating hazards, encouraging employee engagement, and fostering continuous improvement. We look forward to sharing more about how we stay Forever Safe as the month continues and how you can commit to workplace safety and the ongoing well-being of all employees. Learn more about National Safety Month.