As part of our year-round efforts to advance our culture of safety, over 100 leaders from across NS enhanced their professional skills during multi-day Safety Leadership Summits held in June and July. Leaders were selected from both field facing and non-field facing roles to participate.

Both summits helped leaders to cultivate skills, insights, and relationships necessary to build effective leadership, a critical component in advancing our goal to be the gold standard of safety for the rail industry. The summits reinforced how trust and performance are vital in positively differentiating NS among our competitors.

“At NS, everything starts with safety.  At Safety Summits, as with all our education and engagements, we reinforce that safety is the value through which every decision must be filtered, regardless of the railroader’s position or title,” said John Orr, Chief Operating Officer. “We are committed to investing in our people and reinforcing clearly defined ballast to boardroom expectations to stop whenever there is a need for additional understanding or direction.”

Sessions were held at NS’ headquarters in Atlanta and at our Moorman Yard in Bellevue, Ohio. During each session, leaders developed their skills through real-time hands-on application of new safety-related learnings. They collaborated with colleagues from throughout NS while improving their safety plans and protocols.

Labor leader panels were also held during each session. During these moderated discussions, union representatives joined NS leadership for discussions about safety, service, and productivity.

The next Safety Leadership Summit will be held in November. Teams from the inaugural summits will present updates on safety challenges they identified and their progress on advancing improvements in safety performance.