Building sustainable safety systems

By Emma Peterson. 

Over the last decade, Ro Lewis has watched as safety has become an integral part of the fabric of Tremco’s being. 

In this episode of Roofing Road Trips®, Karen Edwards had the chance to talk to Ro Lewis about Tremco’s efforts to build a strong safety culture. Ro is the executive director of health safety and the environmental team for Tremco CPG Field Services. This means he is an advocate for the safety of the entire field services division, which has nearly 2,000 employees around the globe. 

 He explained what this job looks like on a day-to-day basis, “As the head of the safety team, I'm responsible for the overall strategy and implementation of corporate safety initiatives and comprehensive implementation of safety practices and principles.” This includes continually building, growing and driving the safety culture at Tremco. 

Ro started at Tremco over eleven years ago now and has seen the safety culture progress over his time with the company. He explained, “It's one thing to just talk about it, to give them a hard hat, give them some gloves. That's not where we are. Today, it's really permeated into the fabric of organization.” Tremco has consciously made safety a cornerstone of their business and is always on the lookout for new initiatives.  

That active interest is how they learned about OSHA’s national safety stand-down. Ro explained, “It encourages employers to participate by hosting a stand-down to discuss fall protection and safety when working from heights.” Tremco saw this as an opportunity to not only participate but grow their own safety culture. 

Just last year they held their inaugural Tremco Field Services Global Safety Week as an extension of the learning done during the national safety stand-down. Ro shared a bit about this event, “It’s an annual event aimed at providing our people an opportunity to focus on our comprehensive safety culture and examine and celebrate our employees' daily safety performance, which impacts them, it impacts their families, it impacts our organization and the communities in which we work.” 

Read the transcript or Listen to the podcast for more about how Tremco is building a culture of safety in their company.