Employee Health and Safety

At Dover, our employees are our most valuable asset. Our 2025 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 contribute by making quality products for our customers, engaging in collaboration, and driving innovation. 

Safety performance at our facilities starts with strong leadership and is driven by our safety-first culture and our continuous improvement mindset. With the support of our corporate center in developing integrated health and safety policies, strategies and best practices, safety performance has historically been measured and managed primarily at the individual operating company level. Operating company leaders regularly examine safety performance, including assessing root causes of recordable injuries, and promote leading safety actions. 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, 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 are valuable to drive change and are essential to deliver on our commitment with respect to safety in our operations.

Health and Safety Goal Graphic
Health and Safety in 2021 Graphic


In 2021, we reduced our TRIR to 0.98, a 26% 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 a number of initiatives and attributes across our facilities, such as:

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 and express it every day through our actions:

  • Driving performance by implementing world class safety processes and procedures
  • 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 including demonstrating our visible commitment
  • Complying with legal, regulatory, and other business requirements

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 EHS representatives from each of our operating companies and members of Dover’s EHS team at the corporate center.  The COSE team meets on a regular basis in a cooperative effort to promote EHSS in the workplace. The COSE team leverages EHSS expertise across Dover; develops and strengthens internal EHSS talent; establishes organizational EHSS efficiencies; enhances EHSS alignment on critical processes across operating companies; promotes and highlights EHSS best practices; and drives EHSS accountability across operating companies.

Dover Safety Excellence Awards

Each year, we recognize outstanding safety performance at the site-level based on quantitative (e.g., TRIR, training hours, kaizen, etc.) and qualitative (e.g., culture, processes, engagement, etc.) evaluations. Winning facilities are awarded a Dover Safety Excellence trophy and site celebration.

Pictured below are employees at Dover Fueling Solutions in Austin, Texas, the 2021 Gold Award Winner for large facilities at the 2021 Dover Safety Excellence Award. The team was awarded the Gold Award due to their consistency in performance, demonstration of leadership support, high employee engagement through kaizen, and ergonomic improvements.

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. We are piloting various additional programs to engage employees in hazard identification and correction including find it, fix it programs and kaizens.