Uponor North America has again been honored with two Governor’s Safety Awards by the Minnesota Safety Council. The company’s Apple Valley campus won its fifth Governor’s Safety Award, recognized at the Bronze level this year, and the Uponor Lakeville Distribution Center won its fourth award, achieving the highest level of Diamond.

The annual Governor’s Safety Awards, which date back to 1934, recognizes Minnesota employers for safety and health excellence in protecting employees from injuries, illnesses, and incidents. Organizations with an incident rate below those of the State and National rates in their industry are awarded for their efforts.

“Safety is the #1 priority across the Integrated Supply Chain organization,” said Jon Sillerud, vice president, Integrated Supply Chain. “We start every shift-change meeting with the safety topic, and in 2023, we made enhancements to our safety program and placed emphasis on improving our safety culture. We also launched a Mission Zero program to raise awareness of safety with all employees. In 2023 we reduced our Lost-Time-Incident Frequency rate by 48 percent, which was a huge improvement. For 2024, we have comprehensive plans to further reduce our Lost-Time-Incident Frequency rate by 20 percent as we move closer to our aspirational goal of zero workplace accidents.”

Sillerud went on to say that as a nine-time recipient of this award, Uponor attributes this recognition to not only raising employees’ awareness and improving its safety culture, but also to a system of extensive self-audits, inspections, and risk assessments, as well as a newly implemented computer-based training.

To see a complete list of award recipients, visit MinnesotaSafetyCouncil.org.