Striving for an Injury-Free Workplace

"Probably one of the most important things we as the management team in Lilly manufacturing can do is ensure that our employees have a safe working environment in which to add value to Lilly products. It is absolutely inconceivable that we could tolerate working situations where we could put our employees at risk." Michael Eagle, Vice President, Manufacturing

Occupational health and safety is not only a concern in the manufacturing areas at Lilly but in every office, research laboratory and sales field location as well. This is a fact that has not gone unnoticed in the Lilly Research Laboratories:

"We must do a better job of maintaining and in fact enhancing a safe working environment. You might wonder why this is a specific Lilly Research Laboratories objective. If you look at our serious accident rate, it is much too high, twice as high as rates in what we consider to be our peer companies. We have to begin to pay attention and focus seriously on health and safety." August Watanabe, M.D., Executive Vice President, Science and Technology

As you can see by the Lilly Serious Injury/Illness Chart, despite recent progress, it's clear that accidents are happening too frequently throughout our operations. In 1995, Lilly formally dedicated itself to the principle that no accident is acceptable.

As we work toward that overarching goal, we have established measurable goals for the next several years:

cut serious injuries that require treatment by at least one-half over the next three years have no more than two serious injuries or illnesses per 100 employees by the year 2000, which we refer to as our "2 x 2000" goal have no more than one serious injury or illness per 100 employees by the year 2003.

In 1997, 16 of Lilly's 29 sites had already achieved the "2 x 2000" goal.