When we talk about workplace safety, especially in operational environments, it’s common to hear that “accidents are part of the job.” But the truth is: an accident is not normal, it’s a process failure.
In 2024, I had the opportunity to lead a catering operation that reached an important milestone: a full year without a single lost-time accident, in a scenario of high operational complexity.
To put the challenge into perspective:
2.5M meals served: more than 2,500,000 meals served in the year
20M hours worked: more than 20 million hours worked
0 lost-time cases: zero lost-time accidents in 2024
In other words: an almost perfect scenario for accidents to happen.
Even so, we brought lost-time incidents to zero. And that didn’t happen by luck — it happened through culture, process, and leadership.
Industrial kitchen: the perfect environment for risk
The kitchen is one of the most critical environments when it comes to safety:
Wet and slippery surfaces
Hot and sharp equipment
Constant use of knives and machines
Fast pace and pressure for volume
People moving all the time
On top of that, there’s a factor that’s often overlooked: the normalization of risk.
“A small cut,” “a mild burn,” “a slip without a fall” start to be seen as part of the routine.
And that’s exactly where the danger lies.
The main actions that made the difference
Real presence in the operation (Gemba): We spent less time behind desks and more time on the shop floor. We significantly increased gemba walks in the kitchens, observing processes, flows, behaviors, and real risks.
Not to police, but to:
Understand reality
Listen to the team
Improve processes together with the people doing the work
Safety Standstill – 12 sessions in the year: We created an initiative called the “Safety Standstill.”
Throughout the year:
We held 12 national sessions
We paused all operations across Brazil for 60 minutes
With a single topic: safety
What made it different:
Top leadership presence
Straight talk, no endless PowerPoint
Real cases, real situations, real risks
This made one thing crystal clear to teams: safety isn’t a slogan, it’s a strategic priority.
The Voice of Safety – active listening to those who live the risk: We implemented the “Voice of Safety” program, fully focused on active listening.
The people who understand risk best aren’t in the office. They’re on the front line.
We created channels so employees could:
Report risks
Suggest improvements
Point out process failures
Speak up without fear of punishment
This generated something powerful: shared accountability.
Measurement, psychological safety, and purpose
Real measurement: severity and micro-events: We started measuring safety in a more mature way:
SLAs for event handling
Severity rate
Recording every single incident, even minor scratches
The goal wasn’t bureaucracy. It was to spot patterns before serious accidents happened.
A small cut today = a big accident tomorrow, if ignored.
Psychological safety, the invisible factor. Perhaps the most important point of all. We worked hard to create an environment with:
Trust
Respect
Openness to speak up
No fear of punishment for reporting mistakes
People only take care of safety when they feel safe to talk about it.
The true differentiator: purpose
At the end of the day, it wasn’t just process. It was purpose.
We connected safety to something bigger:
Caring for your own life
Caring for your colleague
Going home in one piece
Sustaining a healthy operation over the long term
The operation understood that producing a lot is important. Producing safely is non-negotiable.
Zero accidents is not utopia. It’s the result of present leadership, a strong culture, active listening, clear processes, and people at the center of the strategy. That’s only possible when safety is understood not as a department, but as an organizational value. And when it becomes culture, results follow — in the numbers, in the people, and above all, in the lives preserved.
– Felipe Rios, Facilities & Food Service Specialist
