Covington Plant Receives TN Governor's Award of Excellence for Workplace Safety and Health

Steven D. Hawkins, Administrator, Tennessee OSHA (second from left) presents The Governor’s Award Sugaright employees.

"Sugaright has demonstrated a strong commitment to maintaining a safe and healthy workplace. The evaluation criteria for this award is challenging, and this company has worked extremely hard to meet and exceed the standards the award requires."

Wendy Fisher, Assistant Commissioner Tennessee Dept of Labor and Workforce Development

The Tennessee OSHA (TOSHA) has recognized the Sugaright Covington facility with the Governor's Award of Excellence on July 2, 2021 at the Tennessee's Safety and Health Conference held in Nashville. The award recognizes Tennessee employers and employees who meet a required number of hours without workplace injuries serious enough to cause an employee to miss a day of work or restrict normal job activities.

Sugaright qualified for the Governor's Award by working more than 103,257 hours without a lost time or restricted duty workplace injury or illness.

Out of 139,000 registered businesses in the state of TN, only 7 companies received this award in 2021!!!

The Covington plant leadership spoke about their deep seated passion for safety and the key practices leading to a successful safety program:

“We care about the Safety and Well-Being of our Employees. We want to provide the Safest work environment possible to all Employees. We want Employees to leave work and arrive home to family and friends in the same condition that they arrived to work in. This Governor’s Award reflects the Safety mind set of all our Employees. We not only look out for ourselves but for each other as well.

This does not happen by accident. This is a TEAM effort. Everyone at the plant is involved in Safety."

Douglas Matthews, Covington HR & Safety Manager

“Receiving this award for the 3rd time means that the processes we use to make safety a precondition to doing a job really work. Validation that we are doing what needs to be done to provide a safe workplace through FAR (Focused Area of Responsibility) Zones, Leader Standard Work, Safety Audits, and observations of jobs being performed are some of the keys to our success. I also believe our Safety Committee’s commitment to safety is real, and our solutions to personal risk are practical which creates a culture where people are willing to do the right things to stay safe.”

Raymond Anderson, Covington Plant Manager

Congratulations to the entire Covington Team for a job done safely, conscientiously and successfully!!

Doing Sugaright!