Rome wasn’t built in a day. Neither are world-class safety programs.
Fastenal Company has 24,820 employees in 3,498 locations in 25 countries. The Minnesota-based industrial supplier has employees working on the factory floor, in distribution centers, retail shops, and driving to deliver products internally and externally to industrial clients. That adds a lot of complexity and potential challenges to ensuring employees leave work in as good, if not better, condition than when they arrived.
In 2013, Fastenal took a good, hard look at its safety program and decided things needed to change. There wasn’t a serious injury, fatality or other incident that prompted the review, says Ryan Tucker, a corporate EHS and sustainability senior manager. Instead, it was a desire to do better. To go beyond compliance and start to really move the needle.
“When we look back to that time frame, we were focused on compliance-driven requirements, OSHA standards and really keyed in on the occupational health and safety side,” Tucker says. “[We were] really keyed in on the occupational health and safety part of protecting the employee. … We were focused on developing and improving programs, processes that were in place.”
Tucker says a key part of Fastenal’s safety journey has been the Safety Leadership Conference, where Fastenal employees have learned new philosophies and tactics to make workplaces safer.
That prompted Fastenal to take a closer look at its own data and examine opportunities for improvement. Tucker says Fastenal found high severity incidents fell into four broad categories: lockout tagout, work at heights, powered industrial trucks and trailer securement. Fastenal launched its Big 4 Journey program in 2018.
As a result of their sustained efforts, Fastenal has since reduced the number of serious injuries, high severity financial claims and regulatory impact incidents.
The company has kept focusing on ways to improve, grow and expand its safety program ever since.
Sara Weaver, a corporate EHS and sustainability manager at Fastenal, says after attending a few Safety Leadership Conferences, the company was inspired by—and motivated to—apply to be one of America’s Safest Companies.
“That was really always a goal for us from the time that we found out about it,” Weaver says. “Coming off of that Big 4 implementation, we were seeing really great results with that program. We [had] internally established our ISO 14001 and 45001 programs.
“Just as a whole, our EHS programs were growing and we were really doing better than we ever were. By continuing to stay connected to those EHS Today events, we were like, ‘Hey, we feel like we're ready, like we're in the best place we've been in in a long time.’ This award would really mean a lot to us. This is the time for us to go ahead and go after it."
EHS Today agreed and recognized Fastenal as one of America’s Safest Companies of 2021.
In a bit of a full circle moment, Tucker and Weaver will detail where Fastenal’s been, what the award meant for employees and what its working toward next at Safety Leadership Conference 2025, being held from October 20-22 in Pheonix, Arizona. More information, including registration, can be found at www.safetyleadershipconference.com.
Listen to Tucker and Weaver’s full conversation with Managing Editor Nicole Stempak below.
