Editor's Note: There will be an awards ceremony for the 2022 class of America's Safest Companies at the Safety Leadership Conference in Cleveland on Oct. 18-20, where current and past winners will be sharing their blueprints for success. You can learn more about the conference and sign up to register at www.safetyleadershipconference.com.
Lauger Companies, Inc.
Industrial, Commercial Construction
Victoria, TX
31 employees | 1 site | 1 EHS professional
Can you reach a point where your company is so well-regarded in the realm of safety that it no longer has to make its case?
Yes, is the answer from Lauger Companies. “We took on a large project with Exxon out in New Mexico and we were hired only because of our safety performance,“ explains Barry Lauger, EHS manager. “The contracts administrator told me, 'We had to see if you guys were as good as your safety record, we had no choice.' I asked her two weeks after we started, 'have we lived up to our record?' She responded, 'even better.' We no longer have to or need to make the case for safety.”
Over the past 17 years that the company has performed construction services for commercial and industrial projects they have worked 900,000 hours with zero workplace recordable incidents. They have also been awarded the ABC Step Dimond Award for the past six years.
How do you get to that point?
The company says its culture accounts for its success. “Our company and our employees, would not be successful if not for our caring atmosphere,” says Lauger. “We continue to grow and add employees. Yet, every employee is met and greeted by everyone here. The safety orientation is one-on-one.”
Respect is front and center. "If during a safety inspection someone is found performing unsafe work, we do not speak down or humiliate our employees,” says Lauger. “We ask them why do you think you were doing your project in this manner. Did you understand this practice was unsafe? In other words, we want to understand the core thinking that brought about this action. Then we work to correct the internal decision-making that brought about this choice.”
Another manifestation of the culture of caring is transparency. “We discuss labor costs, insurance costs with all employees all the time,” notes Lauger. “We show our employees that even if they save two hours every day for 5 years and then had the one accident that is inevitable, all those hours would not cover the costs of one incident. Our workforce hours are not enough to cover one incident without having our company, and therefore our employees being removed for consideration for work due to safety metrics used at plants.”
However, being a small company has not stopped Lauger from having a safety record that is “second to none. "Our system of identifying hazards on a continual basis, with continuous safety training with a caring attitude that moves in both directions between management and employees has empowered our company to grow a safety culture that is bottom-up and top-down in every situation.”