Think ensuring safety at your facilities is tough? Imagine doing it for a missiles and defense systems manufacturer with more than 15,000 employees at 234 sites around the world. Then imagine the company is experiencing a period of “unprecedented growth,” with the many associated staffing, training, and resource management challenges.

That’s the daily reality for the 55 EHS professionals in Lockheed Martin’s Missiles and Fire Control unit. Just doing the job could be considered a feat unto itself. Lockheed Martin’s EHS team is even more impressive for their extraordinary safety performance, which earned the company a spot on America’s Safest Companies 2018, as named by EHS Today.

Okay, I don’t know what you do for a living—maybe it’s more dangerous than missile manufacturing. Or perhaps you’re one of those 55 EHS professionals, or a safety manager at a competing firm. But whatever you do and wherever you work, there’s plenty to learn from the 13 organizations named to last year’s ASC list.

Dave Blanchard and Stefanie Valentic write, for EHS Today:

“To be considered one of America’s Safest Companies, organizations must demonstrate: support from leadership and management for EHS efforts; employee involvement in the EHS process; innovative solutions to safety challenges; injury and illness rates lower than the average for their industries; comprehensive training programs; evidence that prevention of incidents is the cornerstone of the safety process; good communication about the value of safety; and a way to substantiate the benefits of the safety process.

In the profiles that follow you’ll see all of the above, as the best practices, employee engagement and safety leadership on display at these organizations truly put them in rare company with the previous ASC winners. With these companies, you won’t see the safety function siloed off as more of a reaction than a plan; instead you’ll see safety leveraged as a competitive advantage. You’ll see familiar corporate giants, as well as smaller companies you may have never heard of before. All of them share one trait in common: When it comes to safety, they get it.”

Check out the list of America’s Safest Companies here. 

By the way, 2020 applications are currently open. Think you have what it takes to make the list? Apply here.