Safety Culture and Accountability

We’ve been able to make some significant improvements in the safety of our operations over the last decade, with a substantial decline in the rates of injuries. We have improved our management systems, engineered out known safety risks wherever possible, and augmented our training. But getting to the next level – and our goal of zero fatalities and serious injuries – means we must change the culture of our work force. Today, the major safety challenge at Ford is improving employee adherence to existing safety procedures and improving employee awareness to recognize and eliminate hazards.

In 2013, we marked our third consecutive year of zero fatalities among Ford employees. However, we unfortunately experienced three fatalities among contractors – one in Chicago, one in India and one in Russia. As a result, we are putting greater focus on changing the culture of safety not only of our own employees, but also of the service contractors we hire to clean our facilities, remove trash and scraps, cook meals in cafeterias and maintain equipment, among other outsourced tasks.

Contractor Safety Culture

We are pleased that we have not had a fatality of one of our own Ford employees for three consecutive years. Yet, we continued to experience service contractor fatalities and serious injuries on our property. It is unacceptable to us that anyone would be killed or seriously injured while working at one of Ford’s locations.

Ultimately, safety is the responsibility of the service contractors we hire to perform certain tasks on our behalf. However, we believe we can do more to elevate the importance of safety among our service contract organizations. We want to be sure that the service contractors we hire – and there are hundreds of them worldwide – have the proper training and credentials and that they are making safety a top priority.

The service contractor fatalities in India and Russia occurred while individuals where doing routine activities. While we at Ford cannot directly control their actions, we can do more to push our service contractors toward the highest safety standards.

In 2013, we updated our required safety standards for service contractors so they are now similar to what we already use for construction contractors that we hire to build or renovate Ford facilities. We now require that each service contractor have someone accountable for safety at the contractor organization. And, we’re now assigning a Ford employee to be the dedicated safety liaison and person responsible for each service contractor at each location.

We will put even greater focus on service contractor safety in 2014.

Changing Our Safety Culture

With our own employees, meanwhile, we continue to take a more emotional approach to safety, and we believe it’s been making an impact. On December 26, 2009, one of our employees died in a tragic accident at Ford’s Kentucky Truck Plant in Louisville. Ronald Cassady’s death shattered the tight-knit plant and profoundly impacted our company.

The following year, we produced a documentary about Cassady – a 16-year Ford veteran who died of injuries after a 220-pound steel beam fell on top of him. The video, which was translated into multiple languages for required viewing by tradespeople at all of our manufacturing facilities, focuses on Cassady’s friends, coworkers and family as they share the painful details of that horrific December day.

The video made a big impression on our people. And in the years since, we have been producing more videos that tell real-life stories of employees who were injured – or who had a close call – on the job. Some of the “Faces of Safety” videos include images of a worker’s family to remind our people that when they ignore the rules of safety on the job, they’re not just putting themselves at risk – they’re putting the futures of their loved ones at risk too.

Our target audience for the videos is skilled tradespeople – the employee category that is at highest risk for serious injuries. These are the individuals who troubleshoot equipment, make repairs and retool the manufacturing lines during a plant shutdown. Eight of our last 10 fatalities – including Ron Cassady – occurred during maintenance activities. Approximately 20 percent of our employees are in the skilled trades. Yet they have represented 80 percent of our fatalities.

Many serious injuries occur during plant shutdowns or other intense periods of major change. In the U.S., shutdowns typically take place in December and July of each year as we prepare our facilities for new vehicle models. From 2011 through 2013, our shutdown periods showed excellent safety results.

As part of our cultural shift, we’re also now working more closely with the UAW¹ and use positive reinforcement to further encourage plant work teams toward safety successes.

Reinforcing Accountability

We establish accountability for health and safety performance through business planning, policy deployment and scorecard processes, which set targets and assign responsibility for meeting those targets. Business operation and plant managers are responsible for health and safety in the operations they manage, and their performance in this area is a factor in their incentive compensation. In addition, safety performance is included in the scorecards of salaried employees as appropriate, including those of the CEO and business unit leaders.

As our safety programs have strengthened, we have looked for ways to increase the accountability of all workers so they not only follow the rules and procedures for themselves, but they also look out for their coworkers. Our safety data demonstrates to us that the majority of injuries are the result of individuals failing to follow established safety protocols. We have increased training programs to ensure that workers understand what is required of them and to further build accountability into individual safety performance.

We use multiple communication channels to reinforce safety messages, from our internal video broadcast system to messages from senior executives. In addition to regular safety talks, we periodically hold safety stand-downs that shut down production at our plants to focus attention on a safety message. We can communicate nearly instantaneously with health and safety specialists worldwide, alerting those at similar facilities when a significant accident occurs, so they can take appropriate preventive action.