Wayne Farms LLC racked up nine separate awards during the 2019 National Safety Conference for the Poultry Industry, once again validating the company’s “Zero Accident Culture” approach to employee safety and health. Industry leaders and peers joined Wayne Farms safety and leadership staff as the company received the Joint Industry Safety and Health Council’s prestigious Awards of Distinction and Awards of Honor for innovative and effective employee safety and health results over the last year. Awards were based on injury statistics over a three-year span in tandem with evaluation of written applications by judges.

The accolades come on the heels of 2018’s banner, multi-awards win, with Wayne Farms picking up ten awards across several facilities. In fact, Wayne Farms’ safety record has steadily improved over the last five years. Under the leadership of Senior Director of Safety and Health Reggie McLee, the Zero Accident Culture platform was launched in 2015 to focus on sustainable safe practices across the entire workforce of nearly 10,000 people.

“We needed people to change the way they thought about safety—to make safety part of everyone’s job no matter where they worked,” he said.

He went on to note the importance of buy-in at every level of the organization. “We had the leadership mandate, but making sure every employee understood that they had a personal stake was the real key — that their own health and the well-being of their fellow employees, even their employment and the success of the company, depends on safe practices.”

Stressing personal responsibility and accountability for safe performance and accident avoidance, the safety team created tools and processes that supervisors could use to observe, analyze and track workplace behaviors and map out best practices to avoid risks company-wide.

The “prevention > correction” approach has resulted in a favorable five-year trend and a DART rate that is half the industry standard, with corresponding drops in numbers of claims and worker’s compensation expenses. Clint Rivers, Wayne Farms President and CEO, also lauded the safety team’s relentless approach to safe practices and employee health and welfare. “The importance of safe practices can’t be overstated — when you focus on safety, you improve in virtually every other area, and continuous improvement is our overarching strategy. These awards are evidence that we’re taking safety seriously at Wayne Farms—and we can’t afford to operate any other way.”

Award winning facilities:
Awards of Distinction
Wayne Farms Samson, AL: Hatchery
Wayne Farms Ozark, AL: Feed Mill
Wayne Farms Decatur, AL: Decatur East Further Processing Facility
Wayne Farms Decatur, AL: Decatur West Further Processing Facility
Wayne Farms Union Springs, AL: Union Springs Processing Facility
Wayne Farms Jack, AL: Enterprise Processing Complex

Awards of Honor
Wayne Farms Danville, AR: Danville Processing Facility
Wayne Farms Danville, AR: Danville Hatchery

Source: Wayne Farms LLC