If you want to lower the number of work-related illnesses/injuries in plant or route operations, the place to start is your employees…get them involved in all phases of your incident-prevention efforts and you’ll see injury rates decline—along with compliance costs and insurance rates that can benefit your bottom line.

That was the consensus view expressed by several operator and supplier partner safety administrators and executives that we contacted from companies in various sectors, including apparel and chemical manufacturing/distribution. John Koduru, director of safety, regulatory and quality for WSI, Loveland, OH, called front-line employee participation in safety committees and related outreach ...