A southeastern Illinois company is the first corporation to win the Governor's Award for Contributions in Health and Safety.
Illinois Department of Labor director Hugo Chaviano presented Marathon Petroleum Company of Robinson with the award Thursday during the Southern Illinois Occupational Safety and Health Day at John A. Logan College.
Marathon safety supervisor Nate Bumstead says safety is something employees have to be aware of at all times.
"People lose focus; people have worries outside of work, so it is a difficult thing to accomplish. You have procedures, you have processes in place, and then you also have to deal with the personal aspects. It's definitely a difficult thing to do and you're always trying to find that silver bullet, or magic bullet or magic pill to get it accomplished."
Bumstead credits a lot of the company's success to a program called Safety One. He says it's an all-day training program led by a professional training company.
"To develop culture, to talk about risk, to talk about integrity and to talk a little bit about procedures. But, it really kind of gets into that difficult arena that we were talking about with the psyche and really trying to put everything and wrap it up in a nice box to where people understand why it's important."
Bumstead says creating a safety culture within a corporation starts with management and trickles down.
Marathon employs over 700 workers, with over 400 contractors depending on what projects are going on at a particular time.
