Designing Our Future Around Employee Safety
A safe workplace is a successful workplace. Employees who feel safe, valued, and fulfilled in a positive work environment are happier, more respectful of their colleagues, and genuinely motivated to provide excellent customer service. At the end of the day, it makes sense for every organization, from the smallest businesses to national institutions like the Postal Service, to ensure the safety of their employees.
At the Postal Service, we take seriously our responsibility to provide a safe and welcoming work environment. Indeed, the safety of our staff is a central tenet of Delivering for America, our 10-year transformation plan that, at its core, is focused on building a better workplace for all employees.
In one of the first actions taken under the plan, we acquired new equipment, expanded capacity, and streamlined processes to help employees overwhelmed by increased package volume.
That was just the first step. Next, we will deploy new vehicles that are safer and more comfortable for carriers. The new fleet will be equipped with advanced technologies to ensure the safest, most effective routes, and will be maintained to the highest degree of safety.
We are also making significant improvements to our infrastructure. By the end of our 10-year transformation, we will have created a network of large, modern, and efficient processing facilities designed to give our staff a brighter, more welcoming, more secure work environment.
This new infrastructure will eliminate ineffective and repetitive work practices that can lead to accidents. It also gives us the space and freedom to ensure that the Postal Service can meet the future needs of America’s businesses and consumers with a world-class network of processing facilities that is also designed around the safety of our employees.
Our unique public service mission also means that we must address safety issues not commonly associated with the workplace. For us, every street, every sidewalk, and every doorstep is a place of work, and because of this, we look to the American public to help ensure our employees can fulfill their duties safely.
Campaigns like our annual National Dog Bite Awareness Week are critical to employee safety. Most people would probably agree that having a dog bite or attack them is a frightening experience. The Postal Service reports that that happened more than 5,400 times to our employees in 2021. Dog bites are entirely preventable. One bite is one too many.
The Postal Service wants to educate the public on the dos and don’ts of responsible dog ownership so that letter carriers can safely approach their residence or business. The theme for 2022 is “The USPS Delivers for America — Deliver for us by restraining your dog.” Spread the news of the campaign with the hashtag #dogbiteawareness.
Find out more information about this important public safety initiative at National Dog Bite Awareness Week.
I am proud to play a role in helping the Postal Service create a safe work environment for our employees — and I am excited that our transformation is putting safety at the center of our workforce strategies.
Linda DeCarlo
Senior Director, Occupational Safety and Health