GC 2021-Corp-Responsibility-Exe-Summary final - Flipbook - Page 16
Spotlight: Safety First – Southern
Company’s No. 1 Value
Safety First is a pledge to our employees,
customers, contractors and communities that our
actions will contribute to a safe environment for
everyone. Our system has long had a commitment
to completing every job, every day, safely. We are
dedicated to continuous safety improvement to
advance our safety culture.
Workforce
Sustainability
Southern Company is focused on having
the right people with the right skills who
are trained to perform their jobs safely
and ethically to meet current and future
business requirements. This focus is
exemplified through Our Values and our
Code of Ethics. We uphold our values,
ethics and human capital beliefs in all we
do and remain cognizant of what they
mean to our workforce’s culture and
well-being.
• Our uncompromising values and ethics are key to
our sustained success
• People are the power behind a safe workplace
• Our people are central to all we do
Learn more
16 Corporate Responsibility
As part of our focus on continuous improvement,
in 2018 we recognized that our “Target Zero” safety
initiative to pursue zero workplace injuries, set with the
best of intentions, had unintended consequences – a
hesitance to report minor incidents and near-misses.
While we continue to measure rates of recordable
injuries, lost-time rate and days away, we have modified
a portion of our compensation goals to focus on
serious injuries rather than total injuries. We have come
to recognize that lessons learned from reporting all
incidents provide the best opportunities to build trust,
apply human performance principles and advance our
safety program. Better understanding the precursors
of potentially serious incidents helps us identify and
implement the critical controls necessary to prevent
serious injuries. We hone and build on our safety culture
by engaging all employees in our solutions, continuing
to share and build on learnings, and contributing to
continuous process improvement to enhance safety.
Our programs and processes resulted in a reduction to
serious injuries and the best safety performance in our
history in 2021.
Our commitment is to Safety First. We work hard
every day to live up to this core element of Our Values
and to sustain a culture in which our employees are
empowered to contribute to making us better.
