Employee Health and Safety

At Dover, our employees are our most valuable asset. Our 2025 employee health and safety goal supports our ambition to drive continuous improvement in employee wellbeing. We believe that a healthy and safe workforce is an engaged workforce that is ready and able to produce quality products for our customers, engage in collaboration, and develop innovative solutions.

Safety performance at our facilities starts with strong leadership and is driven by our safety-first culture and continuous improvement mindset. The Dover corporate center supports our operating companies in developing integrated health and safety policies, strategies, and best practices, and measuring and managing safety performance. Operating company leaders regularly promote leading safety actions and examine safety performance, including through root cause assessments for recordable injuries. In addition, each of our facilities has a designated safety champion who works closely with the facility general manager to promote safe work practices and analyze safety incidents to prevent them from recurring.

Progress against our Goal

Reflecting our commitment to continuous improvement, we have established a goal to reduce our Total Recordable Incident Rate (TRIR) by 40% by 2025. We measure TRIR at each of our facilities in alignment with Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) requirements, which enables us to identify hazards that may be present at our facilities and to measure the effectiveness of our safety activities. We also track leading indicators such as training compliance, action item closure, and behavior-based observations. These indicators are valuable to drive change and are essential to deliver on our commitment to safety in our operations.

Health and Safety Goal Graphic

In 2022, our TRIR was 0.96, a 24% reduction from our 2019 baseline, and we had no fatalities. Operating safely is a shared commitment, and we are grateful to our employees for their engagement in this important mission. Our success in reducing TRIR and improving health and safety is aided by several initiatives and attributes across our facilities, such as:

We acknowledge the slight increase in our TRIR in 2022. Fluctuations in TRIR data are not unusual, often influenced by changes in the size and composition of our workforce, as well as the evolving sectors in which we engage. Despite the recent uptick, we are confident that our proactive measures and commitment to safety will allow us to still meet our 2025 goal.

Zero Harm Program

Dover operates under a prioritization framework that puts safety first, always. In keeping with our commitment to health and safety, we have created the Zero Harm Program, which is designed to provide guidance on a safe working environment and educate our workforce on safety hazards. Each Zero Harm Rule provides guidance that each Dover employee adopts to safeguard themselves and their colleagues. Dover’s center-led safety team hosts weekly “toolbox talks” with our operating companies at which discussion focuses on a selected Zero Harm rule and related mitigation measures.

Zero-Harm-Rules-NoQR

We embrace this commitment to Zero Harm through our actions, including:

  • Implementing world class safety processes and procedures to drive performance
  • Engaging employees across all functions to continuously improve processes and create safe working environments
  • Educating and training employees on their health and safety responsibilities
  • Identifying, resolving, and preventing health and safety hazards and risks
  • Conducting assessments to enhance safe workplace behaviors, environments, and practices
  • Regularly measuring safety performance utilizing leading indicators, as well as qualitative and quantitative metrics
  • Holding ourselves accountable for health and safety programs
  • Complying with legal, regulatory, and other business requirements

In 2022, Dover launched two new initiatives to promote the health and safety of our employees. Dover’s inaugural Safety Awareness Month focused on promoting best practices for workplace health and safety. Dover also created a Hand and Finger Safety Awareness initiative as part of the Zero Harm Program. Hand and finger injuries are a significant hazard, and this new initiative aims to reduce these incidents through additional Zero Harm guidance, focused toolbox talks, posters, and best practice calls. Through these new initiatives and ongoing training efforts, Dover’s Zero Harm Program provides essential health and safety training to our employees.

0DOVER Framework

To drive progress on safety across our operating companies, we use the 0DOVER framework which, similar to a maturity model, establishes a minimum standard of expectations and processes across our operating companies and a common approach towards continuous improvement and achieving excellence in safety.


Center of Safety Excellence (COSE) team

The Center of Safety Excellence (COSE) team comprises employee health and safety (EHS) representatives from each of our operating companies and members of the EHS team at the Dover corporate center. The COSE team meets on a regular basis and works to promote environment, health, safety, and sustainability (EHSS) in the workplace, including by:

  • Leveraging EHSS expertise across Dover
  • Developing and strengthening internal EHSS talent
  • Promoting organizational EHSS efficiencies
  • Enhancing EHSS alignment on critical processes across operating companies
  • Promoting and highlighting EHSS best practices
  • Driving EHSS accountability across operating companies

In 2022, the COSE team supported several initiatives to promote EHS in the workplace, including Find It, Fix It programs for hazard identification and mitigation. The COSE team also worked with cross functional teams to conduct Job Safety Analysis (JSA) kaizen events in 2022, which focused on reducing risks for specific processes and departments with an elevated potential for injury.

Dover Safety Excellence Awards

Each year, we recognize outstanding safety performance at the site-level based on quantitative and qualitative evaluations, including TRIR, EHS training hours, kaizens, safety-first culture, and EHS processes. The award categories are divided into large sites (with over 150 employees) and small sites (with 150 employees or fewer). Winning facilities are awarded a Dover Safety Excellence trophy and site celebration.

In 2022, Dover Fueling Solutions – based in Austin, Texas – was recognized as the Gold Award Winner for large facilities due to their strong focus on Zero Harm and employee engagement, appreciation, and recognition programs. Pictured below, Destaco – based in Oberursel, Germany – was the 2022 Gold Award Winner for small facilities. The Oberursel site was recognized for hosting multiple safety kaizens, implementing proactive risk reduction processes, and achieving zero recordable injuries.

dover excellence award

Safety Performance Assessments

We regularly conduct assessments to examine safety culture and processes at our facilities. The assessment process evaluates critical safety procedures such as materials management, recognition programs, communication practices, risk management, safety policies, environmental factors, equipment, and leadership engagement. We also regularly hold meetings with EHS leads at the corporate center and at our operating companies to share safety best practices and reiterate our established safety measures. These sessions focus on learning from past incidents and identifying preventative actions.