Journey to Safety Excellence
100% Actively Engaged
Culture is the Strategy
Safety Starts with ME!
I am Safety Excellence
2026
Lead with Safety
2025
2024
2023
2022
Mind on Task
Safety Excellence
Actively Engaged
Learn & Improve
Awareness to Ownership
How Kenco Built Safety Excellence — and Achieved its Safest Year Yet
At Kenco, safety is more than an operational priority. It is a commitment to the people who make our business possible every day. In an industry defined by complex, fast-moving operations, physical work, and dynamic environments, safety excellence must be built intentionally.
This report tells that story. Not just as a snapshot of outcomes alone, but as a journey of continuous improvement, shaped by leadership, learning, engagement, and a belief that safer performance is achieved one layer at a time.
As our journey has evolved, the impact has become visible not only in the culture, but in the results: in 2025, Kenco recorded its lowest OSHA recordable and lost time incidence rates in company history.
Since laying the foundation in 2022, Kenco has taken an intentional, layered approach to safety excellence — with each year building on the one before it. What began as a broader shift in mindset evolved into stronger systems, more practical tools, and ultimately a more personal, shared sense of ownership across the organization.
Our Journey to Safety Excellence
2022: Establishing the Foundation
In 2022, Kenco began a deliberate transformation of its safety approach, shifting the focus from basic compliance to a culture- and systems-driven model built for long-term excellence. This journey started with the creation of the Kenco Safety Management System (KSMS), anchored by a renewed Health and Safety Philosophy that reaffirmed core values and expectations.
2023: Actively Engaged
In 2023, our theme was 100% Actively Engaged, which centered on achieving 100% active engagement and placing greater emphasis on proactive leading indicators of safety, rather than relying on lagging injury metrics.
It also marked a shift toward identifying and learning from high-potential events (HPEs) — the types of exposures that may be less frequent, but carry far greater risk. This new foundation led to the creation and strengthening of safety committees, learning teams, and advocate networks designed to engage associates more deeply in the work of preventing incidents.
2024: From Strategy to System with Mind-on-Task
In 2024, we began translating strategy into more consistent, repeatable safety practices across the organization. We anchored the year on our Mind-on-Task initiative, which helped our associates recognize when they were in an error-likely state and pause before harm occurred.
The core tool we introduced was the safety reset, a short process to identify distraction, refocus attention, and re-engage with the task at hand. This helped make safety more practical, especially in moments where routine, fatigue, or distraction could lead to mistakes.
2025: Activating Ownership with Safety Starts with Me
In 2025, Kenco expanded Mind-on-Task into Safety Starts With Me, an enterprise-wide campaign focused on personal ownership. Through banner signings, storytelling, team resets, and “I Work Safe For” commitments, associates connected safe work to their personal motivations and shared responsibility for protecting one another.
Kenco’s safety journey has shown that strong results follow when leadership, culture, and daily practice align. We have worked intentionally to build a safer, more engaged organization, and that effort led to historic performance in 2025. More importantly, it strengthened our capacity to prevent harm and protect what matters most: our people.
— John Barlew, VP Safety, Kenco
2025 By the Numbers A Stronger Culture and Historic Results
11.5M miles
Without a preventable DOT recordable accident
68%
of Kenco warehouses operated without a DAFW (Days Away From work) or Lost Time case
~1,000
Near-miss events investigated
25,000+
Associate reported safety enagements
60
Warehouse locations with zero OSHA recordable injuries, representing 47% of Kenco’s warehouses
60%
Reduction in High Potential Events (HPEs)2
78%
Fewer safety incidents than warehousing industry averages 1
20%
YoY reduction in OSHA recordable rate
The campaign helped make safety more visible, personal, and shared across the organization.
1 Based on BLS NAICS Warehousing and Storage incident rate averages versus Kenco OSHA Incident Rates (2002-2022)
2 High Potential Event definition derived from National Safety Council Serious Incident and Fatality Prevention Model (SIF), 2026
Since 2021, Kenco has reduced its OSHA recordable rate by 32%, lowering its average from more than 3.2 to approximately 2.1. Incident severity and high-potential events have also declined significantly, demonstrating that incidents are occurring less frequently and with less serious consequences.
2026: Raising the Standard and Evolving Our Approach
As we look ahead, Kenco is energized by the opportunity not just to sustain momentum, but to elevate what safety excellence looks like across our operations. In 2026, we are building on this progress through I Am Safety Excellence, a forward-looking initiative centered on three powerful behaviors: Share What I Know, Stay Actively Engaged, and Lead by Example.
At Kenco, safety is not a campaign layered on top of the work. It is a leadership responsibility, a shared expectation, and an ongoing commitment to the people who make the business possible. It is strengthened year over year, measured not just to track performance but to guide improvement, and owned at every level of the organization.
And because safety is never finished work, it must continue to evolve — shaped by stronger insight, wider engagement, and shared ownership at every level of the organization. Most importantly, it remains deeply human: behind every metric is a person, and behind every person is someone counting on them to return home safely.
Share What I Know reinforces our commitment to identifying risk early and speaking up with confidence, ensuring concerns are addressed before incidents occur.
Stay Actively Engaged strengthens our connection to the work through meaningful safety committees and the introduction of Safety Sparks, a new tool designed to spark conversation, deepen understanding of how work is performed, and uncover opportunities to improve.
Lead by Example brings our experiences to life through storytelling, encouraging teams to share lessons learned and build shared awareness that makes every associate stronger and safer.
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