Personal responsibility wed to predictability equals prevention.
It’s a virtuous circle: the more we—employees, partners and clients—practice working safely, the more effectively we can discover and implement procedures that actually reduce the likelihood of safety incidents occurring. Through measurement and analysis, we can manage risk and practice effective prevention.
Practice makes (nearly) perfect.
Our working assumption is that every incident is indeed preventable. By maintaining a fierce focus on the highest risk activities, we do everything possible to ensure they are planned for and controlled to avoid threats to life and property. Our training in proper procedures is thorough and ongoing, with an emphasis on hazard identification, assessment and communication. Safety is not a set of rules, but rather the job of every employee, every contractor, every partner, every client—in short, a priority for all when inside a Vantage facility, from the time it is being built through continuous operation.
“If it isn’t seen, it can’t be measured.”
Employees are not only responsible for their own activities, they are our eyes in the workplace. Their on-the-job vigilance provides data that maintains the overall safety of the place they work in, a place they see as playing a vital role in their own community—and often for society at large. While careful to incorporate all country-specific policies, our global corporate safety standards often exceed local guidance. In addition to our “every employee” mandate, our regular safety audits record nearly 1,000 data points within 30 different areas of data center activities.
Top down and bottom up.
Employees know that responsibility for safety is a shared responsibility supported by executive leadership through training and continuous recognition. At Vantage, training is not a “check-the-box” exercise, but one that seeks to instill a way of working, a mindset that is reflected at every level of the organization. There is complete transparency within Vantage around incident reporting; our Executive Safety Committee is as quick to praise good performance as it is to note any areas of concern.
Highlights
- Zero incidents is a company-wide goal
- C-level involvement in all aspects of Environmental Health and Safety
- All employees have “Stop Work Authority” at all locations
- Active risk profiling
- Ongoing audits include approximately 1,000 data points from 30 activities
- Continuous employee training