Across industry, organizations are enjoying record-low injury rates, a place for safety on the agenda, and greater safety literacy across more employees than ever before. The journey that safety has been on over the past 30 years has taught us what it takes to embed performance discipline into our organizations. It's that very knowledge that will serve us in continuing to reduce risks and in meeting future challenges.
Safety leaders have become experts at change. We've learned how to design robust and sustainable management systems and to integrate them with advancing technology. We've learned how to create behavioral reliability and how to garner the engagement and participation of our entire workforce in sustaining those developments. Lately, we have changed how supervisors lead, how managers engage, and in doing so have built cultures that foster high levels of performance.
Our success, however, has highlighted the tangible challenges we still face. This paper draws on work across five continents to examine present obstacles to safety improvement and outline strategies to overcoming them. We discuss the prominent role safety data plays in risk reduction, and present ways to optimize its value. To meet the challenges of a rapidly changing world, we explore opportunities to build a learning organization. We examine ways leaders can create a safety legacy that leaves an indelible mark on their company. To be able to meet the previous challenges, we have to know how to anticipate risk and groom employees to master exposures. Lastly, we present key considerations for improving safety outside the gates.
We start first with examining how we can continue to grow and develop the talent that got us where we are today. Assuring adequate safety expertise is essential to furthering the progress we've already made.
