Our environmental, health and safety (EHS) professionals work to keep our team members safe and healthy, while keeping facilities operating safely and sustainably. Our EHS program is designed to integrate EHS initiatives into all aspects of business operations. This program is also responsible for applying applicable federal, state and local regulations and for considering proposed legislation from the U.S. Occupational Health and Safety Administration, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and the U.S. Department of Transportation. All operational team members complete training to fully understand the expectation of behaviors defined by our Global EHS Policy.
Safety Performance
We make safety a core focus across our operations, trending 50 percent favorable to the U.S. Wholesale Industry Average as defined by the U.S. Bureau of Labor and Statistics. In 2021, our U.S. Total Recordable Incident Rate (TRIR) was 1.2 and our Lost Time Incident Rate (LTIR) was 0.3.
Safety Programs
Grainger created our Behavior Based Safety (BBS) Program with the aim to build a self-sustaining culture of safety using pointed safety observations performed by supervisors, managers, and directors. These observations provide an opportunity for in-the-moment coaching and positive feedback. Program implementation began in 2011 with our distribution center (DC) network. In 2017, we rolled out the program to our branch network, and in 2020 we expanded the program throughout U.S., including Canada and Mexico. In 2021, the total number of safety observations conducted in U.S. were 39,063.
In 2020, the Corporate EHS team developed both a safety handbook and a new training program for all Grainger sales and service teams. Because our customer sites range from offices to manufacturing facilities to mines and everything in between, the training topics serve to provide the services team with the tools and knowledge to protect themselves in situations they are likely to face when visiting customer sites. Externally, online resources such as Grainger’s the Grainger KnowHow® website of the Safety & Health Solutions Center provide safety information and insights not only for Grainger team members but also for our customers themselves.