How To Build A Legacy

“What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others.” — Pericles

As I watched Notre Dame vie for, and lose, the 2025 College Football National Playoff Championship and the Kansas City Chiefs strive for, and lose, an historic third straight Super Bowl win, I asked myself: why is our culture obsessed with sports legacies? What makes teams like Duke basketball or Canada’s National Men’s Hockey so woven into our lives that, as fans, we will spend about $200 billion a year on sports apparel alone?

I think it is because we know how difficult it is to establish a legacy — to be exceptional day after day, year after year. While athletes’ performances look effortless, we know the thousands of hours they put into practice each year and the countless sacrifices they make over a lifetime to have any shot at something called “legacy.”

At MSCI, we are putting in the reps needed to create a legacy in the industrial metals industry — one of “Zero Harm, Safety Always” (ZHSA) where every worker returns home each day in the same shape they arrived on the shopfloor. To me and to MSCI Board Chairman John Reid, our ZHSA journey is perhaps the most important undertaking in MSCI’s 115-year history. It is, quite simply, legacy defining.

More practically, it will help our member companies respond to a key demand from workers.

Modern Workers Demand A Safety Always Mindset

Last year, the plastics manufacturer DuraPlas surveyed workers about their views on safety. The results make it clear MSCI’s ZHSA journey responds to worker demand. The survey found almost half of employees would at least consider a pay cut to move to an employer with a better culture of workplace safety. Nearly 80 percent said a strong safety culture was a factor when considering a new job.

Bottom line: workers are “willing to take a punch to the pocketbook when it comes to finding an employer that embraces a culture of safety,” DuraPlas said.

The Duraplas survey is not the only one that found workers prioritize safety when choosing an employer. In its 2024 “State of Employee Safety” report, AlertMedia, the world’s leading threat intelligence and risk management provider, found workplace safety ranked as a top driver of employee retention.

Unfortunately, that survey also found employees feel employer safety efforts are stagnating.

To attract and retain employees in a competitive labor market, industrial metals companies must prove those perceptions are wrong. By participating in MSCI’s ZHSA journey, our member companies can do just that.

What Is MSCI’s Zero Harm, Safety Always Initiative?

MSCI’s ZHSA initiative is a cultural endeavor that views safety as a journey, not a destination. In other words: there is no end to this quest. Our goal — indeed, I would argue, our duty — is to get better every single day.

The initiative has four pillars. The first is a reimagined annual safety summit. In 2024, the summit attracted 141 registrants, the most since 2018. The 2025 Safety Summit is set for Oct. 9-10 in Schaumburg, Ill. This event will give our member companies access to the top thought leaders and innovators in the industry. You can save the date by clicking this link.

The second pillar is new proprietary data and benchmarking tools, including a streamlined annual safety survey. In 2024, 64 companies representing 2,000 locations, 150,000 employees, and more than 300 million labor hours participated in the survey. These companies were guaranteed access to detailed benchmarking results that included:

• Excel data tables with comprehensive cross-industry data;
• Customized PDF reports with company-specific information for easy comparison; and
• A searchable, interactive portal for advanced filtering and analysis.

Download a summary of the 2024 Safety Survey findings at this link. We will launch our 2025 survey this spring. Check your inbox for details so your company can participate and get access to this year’s survey data.

The third pillar is safety-specific education opportunities, including an updated series of professional development courses and a new safety leadership program for C-suite executives. The professional development classes started last fall and will continue throughout the year. Regarding executive education, MSCI is working to solidify a program with the McChrystal Group where C-suite leaders will be able to meet with one another and preeminent military and business leaders to consider what a ZHSA culture looks like and how their leadership can advance that culture. Any additional safety offerings will be added to Knowledge and Learning Calendar so your team does not miss out.

The final pillar is access to the latest thought leadership, including the six free safety webinars we will hold annually. We just hosted our first of 2025. Russel Metals safety professionals offered insight into the company’s systems and practices for preventing falls from trailers.

What Russel did was truly remarkable. With no industry standard, it used an employee-centric approach to generate ideas and implement fall prevention systems and practices. I encourage you to watch the replay of this webinar, and all past safety webinars, on-demand at this link.

MSCI’s Legacy-Minded Companies Fueling ZHSA Journey

As Canada’s hockey team and Notre Dame football players — along with Team USA women’s volleyball team and University of Virginia women’s swimmers (who will compete for their fourth straight national title this month) — demonstrate, creating a legacy requires leadership and a culture of teamwork.

I am grateful to John Reid and MSCI’s full board of directors for their leadership and to the 32 member companies that collectively provided more than half a million dollars to make MSCI’s ZHSA journey possible:

• Safety Champions: Alro Steel, Kaiser Aluminum, Kloeckner Metals, Metallus, Nucor, Reliance, Inc., Russel Metals, Ryerson, Steel Dynamics, Inc., Steel Technologies, Welded Tube of Canada, Worthington Steel, and Zekelman.
• Safety Supporters: Arcelor Mittal Tubular, Arconic, Castle Metals, CMC, Gerdau, Hydro, Lapham-Hickey Steel, North American Stainless, NOVA Steel, Olympic Steel, O’Neal Industries, Samuel, Son & Co., LTD., SPS Companies, Inc., and SSAB.
• Safety Partners: CareGo, Commonwealth Rolled Products, KASTO, Southern Coil Solutions, and UpVantage Strategies.

UpVantage Strategies President and Founder Steve Yates also has helped to put meat on the bone of this initiative. If you missed his interview last year outlining MSCI’s ZHSA journey, read it by clicking this link.