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João David Santos, Head of Sustainability at Wilson Sons
At Wilson Sons, Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) is not a box to be checked; it is a core expression of respect for human life.
Wilson Sons is a maritime and port services company that has operated in Brazil for more than 188 years, with around 6,000 people working and maintaining operations along the entire Brazilian coastline when including both its employees and contractors. Its activities inherently involve a wide range of risks, which are continuously present in the services delivered day and night by its workforce. Given the use of large-scale equipment and interaction with massive vessels, safety management has become an integral component of the Company’s business model – a collective mindset, values and practices understood as our safety culture.
The safety culture transformation journey began in 2011, with the introduction of a robust, multidisciplinary methodology focused on identifying and preventing risks capable of causing accidents to employees and other exposed individuals. Recognising that cultural change requires sustained effort and time; senior leadership – in this case referring to the executive board comprised of the CEO, CFO and COO - made a deliberate decision to sponsor, prioritise and personally uphold this transformation. Through the collective engagement of leaders, operational and administrative teams, the company achieved and sustained a 94% reduction in lost-time injury rates over the past 15 years – representing hundreds of individuals who returned home safely.
These significant results were not achieved quickly, nor without challenges. Building upon a robust management system, the transformation involved all levels of leadership and required dedication, conviction and a genuine willingness to change. Our journey revealed four critical insights for any organization seeking cultural transformation.
Embedding a genuine safety culture takes time. Initial results often generate inspiration, motivating teams to adapt routines and processes to new standards. However, the initial enthusiasm of a new program often fades, since a system capable of delivering sustained results reveals its true demands, and inertia is hard to overcome. Reactivity, questioning and a desire to revert to former practices may emerge. This is often the moment when organisations are tempted to ‘shoot the messenger’, rather than confront uncomfortable truths.
In such circumstances, clarity in senior leadership positioning, alignment on short- and long-term objectives, and the resilience required by a transformation that alters established ways of working are essential. Not everything will proceed as planned; it is therefore critical not to retreat from or abandon the intended cultural transformation.
Wilson Sons operates across all regions of the country, in complementary yet distinct lines of business. Operational realities vary significantly and must be understood and respected. While the overarching objective is shared, the pathways to achieving it necessarily differ and progress at different paces.
A remote operation, where a small team must self-manage safety decisions, is fundamentally different from a large terminal through which thousands of people circulate daily. Accordingly, clarity regarding objectives, combined with flexibility to adapt the management system to differing realities, is essential.
As safety performance improved and results were consolidated, Wilson Sons came to position safety as an intrinsic element of how it conducts business, objectively demonstrating respect for the people within its value chain, creating a virtuous circle.
At the same time, the significant reduction in incidents generated tangible benefits, including higher productivity due to fewer accident-related interruptions, lower insurance premiums, and increased attractiveness as an employer due to management practices. Sustaining current performance levels further engages the workforce and reinforces pride in belonging to an organisation with a strong safety culture, creating a value-creating loop in which all benefit and lending legitimacy to the company’s positioning with its stakeholders.
There is a natural tendency to become complacent when results are good. On the other hand, operational contexts evolve and introduce risks or conditions not previously considered. Learning from one’s own mistakes, maintaining a willingness to adapt, and continuously challenging assumptions – without relinquishing achieved results – are essential to sustaining performance over time. Our objective is to acknowledge that while human error is inevitable, our systems must ensure that error never translates into harm.
The invaluable reward of taking care of people is human life. Our executives frequently state that it is impossible to explain the loss of a human life; because life is invaluable, preserving it is a fundamental duty.
Our ultimate success is not measured in percentages, but in a simple daily reality: our people returning home safely, every shift.
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