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Safety National Announces Winners of the 2023 Safety First Grant Program

Safety National Announces Winners of the 2023 Safety First Grant Program

Today, Safety National announced the winners of its annual Safety First Grant Program. Three policyholders will be awarded matching grants in order to develop the creative risk control ideas they submitted into formal safety programs.

“As a market leader and safety advocate, we are committed to identifying industry innovation that reduces the risk of employee injury and illness,” said Mark Wilhelm, Executive Chairman of Safety National. “Over the last nine years, the Safety First Grant Program has funded 29 risk control projects, responding to the emerging needs of our clients while building a blueprint for safer workplaces.”

Winners of the 2023 program included:

  • First Place – Costa Farms was awarded the $10,000 matching grant for the addition of harvesting robots to help with the mobilization of plants in their fields. This innovation will reduce slip, trip, and fall and ergonomic-related employee injuries associated with spacing tasks.
  • Second Place – Big Y Foods was awarded the $5,000 matching grant toward the implementation of ergonomic mixing tables in their bakery department to offset manual material handling of baking goods. These devices will reduce dangerous lifting exposures, which lead to frequent back and shoulder injuries for bakery personnel.
  • Third Place – Berry Global was awarded the $2,500 matching grant for an engineering solution used to eliminate dangerous conditions around turret winders on the production floor. This technology will allow safer operating conditions of pre-existing machines, which will be retrofitted with light curtains and mechanical hard guarding.

Nominees for the annual Safety First Grant Program must be an active Safety National policyholder with a risk-reducing solution that applies to the workers’ compensation line of coverage. The applied solutions must relate to an identifiable and quantifiable loss source and include an anticipated estimate of injury cost savings for the policyholder.

“Each year, our applicants submit increasingly impressive innovative and creative risk management ideas for this program, finding new ways to build a safer workplace for their employees,” said Matt McDonough, Assistant Vice President – Risk Services of Safety National. “In celebrating these winning submissions, we hope other organizations are inspired to discover their next great risk-reducing solutions.”

Full details on the 2023 Safety First Grant Program winning solutions can be found at https://www.safetynational.com/2023-safety-first-grant-winners/ .

The 2024 grant application period will open in June 2024.