Building true safety cultures

By Emma Peterson. 

By focusing on culture in addition to compliance, Tremco aims to strengthen safety practices across the industry. 

At Tremco, September is not just Hispanic Heritage month or Suicide Prevention month – it's also Safety Month! Recently, we brought Ro Lewis, vice president of HS&E for Tremco CPG Field Services, and Tony Kotnik, assistant director of field safety, onto an episode of Roofing Road Trips® to talk about Safety Month and how to build a true safety culture. 

Tony started the discussion with an explanation of what Tremco’s Safety Month is:  

Safety in our industry has come a long way. We're really proud of where we've gotten to, but we also understand that the journey does not end here and Safety Month is an initiative to keep us moving forward. Our slogan is Own it. Live it. Lead it. And what we mean by that is that safety is a responsibility of us all. Every person is important and should be both valued and cared for, and at the same time they have a voice in making the safe work possible. 

And when Tremco says safe work, they don’t just mean being compliant with regulatory bodies like OSHA. No, to their team, safety goes further than that. Ro explained, “Compliance in my estimation is basically the floor, it’s the starting point not the destination. True safety goes beyond that and into the culture of an organization. It’s all the stuff that happens when nobody's watching.” He went on, adding an example of what he’s talking about, saying, “True safety culture is when one employee says to another employee, ‘Hey, I need you to tie off,’ and that person hears it, sees it as somebody looking out for them as opposed to someone standing over them.” 

By encouraging individuals and organizations to create cultures where this scenario plays out, where people own, live and lead with safety in mind, Tremco hopes to help the entire industry move forward. As Tony put it, “The goal of Safety Month is to strengthen ownership across our teams, contractor partners and industry relationships.”  

Listen to the whole episode or Watch the recording to learn more about Tremco’s Safety Month initiative!