MSCI Announces Annual Safety Innovation and Culture Improvement Award Winners

Contact MSCI: Kerrie Rushton, 202-365-6338 or 847-485-3000

Rolling Meadows, Ill., October 22, 2024 — MSCI has awarded its annual Safety Innovation and Culture Improvement awards to three companies. These awards recognize metals organizations that develop innovative approaches to drive safety improvement towards a zero-harm environment.

“The Metals Service Center Institute is on a journey to create a ‘Zero Harm, Safety Always’ culture in the industrial metals industry and these three companies are leading the way toward achieving that goal,” said MSCI President and CEO M. Robert Weidner, III. “By continually innovating and leading from the C-Suite on down, our safety award winners provide an example for all companies in the metals and wider manufacturing industry. By committing to doing better every day, we can ensure the safety of all employees.”

The Safety Innovation Award recognizes a single company that has implemented new tools or processes that keep workers out of harm’s way. Winners must demonstrate dramatically reduced occupational risk or exposure. The Culture Improvement Award recognizes companies that implemented a company-wide initiative to increase employee interest and engagement in worker safety or educate teams about the importance of safety. This year’s recipients are:

• Safety Innovation Award: Russel Metals. With its “Trailer Fall Prevention: Making Trailer Work Safer” program, Russel Metals made working on and around trailers safer for the company’s employees and its third-party carriers. With no industry standard to follow, a range of products shapes and sizes being delivered and shipped, and unique layouts at each facility, trailer safety was a particular challenge for the company. By taking an employee-centric approach that involved active collaboration among all levels of employees, from the CEO to warehouse employees, Russel Metals developed, built, purchased, and implemented trailer fall prevention systems. One of the most revolutionary changes was the incorporation of No Touch Tools, which allowed workers to perform many of the tasks from the ground instead of the top of the trailer. Today, most of Russel Metals’ trailer work is performed on the ground, eliminating the potential for falls altogether.
• Safety Culture Improvement Award (150-1,000 employees): SSAB Americas. As part of SSAB’s Courageous Culture initiative, hourly employees were invited to attend a full day workshop that delved into each person’s ability to lead through their scope of influence. Employees developed an action plan that detailed how to achieve their ideal safety culture. These action plans were combined to yield a comprehensive roadmap for each facility that would encourage and enable employees to develop a collaborative culture, driven by innovation and safety excellence. This initiative was important because it articulated that the ability to lead has little to do with a title. Each person has a scope of influence they wield daily, affecting and influencing others to do better. SSAB is ranked as one of the leaders in safety among its peers according to the Steel Manufacturers Association’s injury statistics and, in 2023, had its third best safety year on record.
• Safety Culture Improvement Award (more than 1,000 employees): On Steel Technologies’ journey to achieving their vision of being the safest and most sustainable metals processing company in the world, the company defined foundational cultural tenets that provide Steel Technologies’ teammates with principles to guide all interactions, prioritize actions, and achieve goals, especially around the highest value of safety. Leveraging the tenets, teammates participate in safety huddles, regular feedback sessions, and consistent reporting and root cause analysis of all near misses and property damages while also recognizing and celebrating wins and achievements.

Judges considered several factors during the application process, including uniqueness of approach; whether the innovation was employee- or management-driven; evidence of employee training in sustaining benefits; and the degree to which the innovation was integrated into the whole organization through a “culture based” approach.

Awardees also each met the following minimum qualifications:

• Had no recent citations from the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), Canada’s Ministry of Labour, or their equivalents.
• Over the last 12 months (July 21, 2023 to July 31, 2024), have not had the equivalent of an OSHA Willful Violation.
• Had no workplace fatalities within the last 18 months (January 1, 2023 to the present).

Quotations from the 2023 Safety Innovation and Culture Improvement Award Winners:

“We are so honored to be recognized by the MSCI for the Safety Innovation Award. I want to thank the entire Russel team for their efforts on this initiative and for the relentless commitment to the safety of our Russel teammates every day.” – Russel Metals Director, President, and CEO John Reid

“Ensuring that our team members go home to their families at the end of the day is our top priority at SSAB. It takes everyone’s vigilance and commitment to prioritize safety on the production floor and beyond. We are honored and excited to receive this recognition from MSCI for our Courageous Culture initiative, which consistently drives us to exceed our daily safety objectives.” – SSAB Americas President Chuck Schmitt

 “The Steel Tech team continues our safety journey together, firmly planted on our cultural tenets. We are proud that for the last three years we have driven our rates to less than half the industry standard for both recordables and lost time injuries, but we know much work remains and safety requires continuous vigilance and commitment. We will keep living our culture on our way to world class safety performance, and ultimately zero injuries. We aren’t done yet!” – Steel Technologies President and CEO Thad Solomon

ABOUT MSCI

Founded in 1909, the Metals Service Center Institute is a nonprofit association based in Rolling Meadows, Ill., serving the industrial metals supply chain. It represents more than 250 businesses with almost 2,300 locations in North America and around the globe. Visit www.MSCI.org for more information and follow us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, and connect with us on LinkedIn.