Introduction

In the corporate world, human life is irreplaceable. You can replace a vehicle or reinstall a manufacturing facility, but you can't replace a person. – This should be the driving factor in defining every business's basic environment, health, and safety (EHS) principles. 

In implementing safety measures, a company must demonstrate its commitment to the moral duty we all share of protecting and respecting human life. Leaders are responsible for establishing these norms for their team and fostering a safety culture that puts the health and safety of the company's employees first. 

Unfortunately, the ILO estimates over 160 million victims of work-related diseases and 340 million occupational accidents yearly. Each year, 2.3 million men and women face accidents at the workplace, which cause more than 6,000 fatalities daily.

The numbers demonstrate that leaders of different industries continue to undermine their human assets. While they may be business executives, they fail to be effective leaders.

To be an effective leader, one must show genuine concern for their team members and consistently put safety first in all they do. Great leaders are known to treat their teams with the same care they would give their own families and effectively integrate safety into the decision-making process at all levels of a business. A leader, particularly in the EHS sector, must consider the consequences of every choice for the safety of their team members.

As the pioneers of EHS and occupational safety, we understand the importance of leadership in painting a workplace's safety culture. In this whitepaper, we explore in detail how the leaders of the modern corporate world can play a part in protecting their employees, environment, and society.