Our Injury Prevention Program Statement of Content begins with: "Our Mission Statement at Peterson is clearly identified as Customer First! We believe that in taking this approach we all stand the best chance of long-term success and prosperity. Inherent in our stated mission of gaining customer satisfaction is a primary objective of providing a safe and healthful work environment..." When this was written in 1990 we recognized that customer satisfaction was clearly tied to employee satisfaction. We also thought a good OSHA recommended safety program would get the job done. We learned differently over the years and in 2002 we set out to chance the way we do business in regards to safety, by introducing our Zero Accidents program (ZAP). The change we envisioned was to ensure that working safely was every bit as much a part of our day to day productive efforts as being accurate and timely is to our delivery of products and service. In listening to some of our customers and other companies that have been successful at reducing accidents it was clear that this cultural change would not happen over night. It was also clear it would not only require the direction and support of top and key management, but that it must be on-going (daily & forever) and integrated (part of our DNA, "the way we do business") with every aspect of our work environment and that it had to involve all employees at all levels. To fully succeed we needed each and every employee to recognize the relevance of our efforts and to accept responsibility for their own safe work behaviors. We also needed for them to feel comfortable about providing input as they desired, as we believe that consistent and open two way communication builds trust relationships that are critical to the success of achieving zero accidents.

Our ZAP program is first and foremost directed towards helping employees avoid the accidents that they do not want to have in the first place. No accident – no injury. While not always an easy job to do it is certainly an easy job to work on. Easy because the vast majority of accidents occur at the working interface – where tool meets hand, or chip meets eye, or etc. It all begins with helping workers to acquire knowledge, skill and attitude – training, training, and training.

All technical training at Peterson includes the safe (correct procedure) use and care of all tools, equipment, and materials. This is the best way to ensure "done once – done right" and also to ensure that employees will be able to recognize, evaluate and control the potential hazards they may face every hour of every day. Being consistent about weekly tailgate meetings and monthly refresher safety training meetings is another important aspect of the "on-going" and "integrated" process. Employees are instructed that they should not sign off on any safety meeting and should speak up if they believe they have not received information that helps them to recognize, evaluate or control potential hazards of the topic being discussed. We believe this is consistent with our desire for open communications and for the building of a working trust relationship around our safety efforts.

Attitude is also trained. The vast majority of accidents are caused by someone acting or failing to act in a safe manner – inconsistent use of knowledge or skill, or simply – performing a wrong behavior. On the other hand we don't want working safely to just be a mindless habit. It requires mindfulness, or as we say, "safety mindedness". Also because you can not recognize, evaluate or control a potential hazard that you do not see or think about in the first place, our safety training also includes behavior based awareness as well, and is accomplished through a program called SafeStart.

SafeStart training program helps our employees to self trigger on the physical and mental states we can get into that can contribute to committing a critical error that could lead to an accident and subsequent injury. Very few people can concentrate on 100% of their activities 100% of the time. Our chance of improving concentration though, is greatly enhanced through the daily contacts made by managers and supervisors to specifically provide support and encouragement to this training initiative. These contacts are also the center piece to the weekly and monthly training and inspection activities that make up our supervisors and managers Monthly Safety Accountabilities. When coupled with our OSHA Accident Prevention Program, our focus on the working interface, our other Human Resource Systems (selection, developmental planning, employee relations, performance management), attention to leadership, as well as our over organizational structure - we believe we have a fairly comprehensive approach to preventing accidents and therefore injuries at Peterson.

In the article "Creating a Safety Culture", which we used extensively to help construct ZAP, it says: "In a strong safety culture, everyone feels responsible for safety and pursues it on a daily basis; employees go beyond "the call of duty' to identify unsafe conditions and behaviors, and intervene to correct them." We knew this cultural change would not happen over night, but we said our efforts would be on going and integrated with every aspect of our business and that we would continue to do what ever made sense to help folks understand how to work without getting hurt. That's what we mean when we say Zero Accidents. We continue to believe that is the best way to provide a safe and healthy work environment for the satisfaction of our employees and to improve the efficiencies and effectiveness of delivering products and service for the satisfaction of our customers.