Workforce safety

We are steadfast in our commitment to safety. We are building an organization where every work activity is designed to facilitate safe working conditions, and every member of our workforce is encouraged to speak up if they see an unsafe or at-risk condition with confidence that their concerns and ideas will be heard and addressed. 

Workforce safety strategy

Our True North Strategy sets our 10-year enterprise strategy toward achieving our purpose and delivering improved safety outcomes. Our 2024 Safety Plan captures the safety components of this strategy and includes workforce (coworker and contractor), public, and process safety.

In addition to deploying the PG&E Safety Excellence Management System (PSEMS), we are focusing on strategic programs to address the highest health and safety risks, which include:

• Organizational Culture and Safety Mindset
• Contractor Safety
• Serious Injuries and Fatalities (SIF)
• Transportation Safety
• Occupational Health and Safety
• Personal Safety

We also continue to take a multifaceted approach to protect the safety of the public through our operations. These public safety efforts include vegetation management, electric grid sectionalizing, and process safety for gas, electric operations, and power generation. 

Safety governance and leadership

We are committed to significantly improving our safety performance by strengthening our risk-based focus, so we understand our risks, prioritize our work, and use controls to reduce them and continuously measure and improve risk reductions.  

Our Chief Safety Officer (CSO) reports to the Executive Vice President, Operations and Chief Operating Officer, which enables the synergies and visibility necessary for our enterprise safety organization and operational teams to execute our workforce safety strategy. Our Chief Risk Officer (CRO) reports to the Executive Vice President, General Counsel and Chief Ethics and Compliance Officer and oversees our Enterprise and Operational Risk Management program. Additionally, the CSO and CRO meet with and report to the Safety and Nuclear Oversight Committees of the Boards of Directors.

Board governance

The Safety and Nuclear Oversight (SNO) Committees of the PG&E Corporation and Pacific Gas and Electric Company (Utility) Boards oversee matters relating to safety, risk, wildfire safety, and operational performance. The SNO Committees receive regular safety reports from management that include performance metrics, reporting on serious incidents, and actions to improve workforce, customer, and public safety. Areas of focus for the SNO Committees include: 

• Safety programs, promotion of safety culture, and long-term and short-term safety plans
• Wildfire risk reduction and performance against the wildfire safety commitments made by the Utility
• Operational performance and risks related to the Utility’s nuclear, generation, and gas and electric transmission and distribution facilities
• Cybersecurity

Management

Within management, responsibility for safety is shared by our teams. This approach is strategic, practical, and founded upon the best practices of the industry, recognizing that the hazards within each team may be different. We believe that the people closest to the work know the most about the inherent risks associated with performing it. Encouraging our coworkers to speak up helps us to better understand and address those risks.

Our Lean operating system includes daily, weekly, and monthly operating reviews at every level of the organization, which improves our ability to identify and resolve safety concerns, trends, and risks.

PG&E has also implemented a Regional Service Model to better address local issues and incorporate the needs and concerns of our customers into operating decisions. This includes a regional field safety organization led by five Regional Safety Directors, who advise and support our functional groups as they implement health and safety programs with a focus on:

• Improving our organizational culture and safety mindset
• Identifying hazards to reduce SIF risk exposure
• Observing and inspecting safety practices
• Investigating safety incidents and implementing learnings to prevent reoccurrence
• Conducting safety tailboards and training
• Preparing for and responding to emergencies

Grassroots safety teams consisting of frontline coworkers also share ideas and partner to develop effective solutions to reinforce a strong and proactive safety culture.

Contractor safety

A key area of our workforce safety strategy involves strengthening contractor safety. We value our contractors and are working to operationalize a shared commitment to public and workforce safety. In 2023, PG&E employed approximately 1,100 active working contract partners, which included roughly 30,500 contract employees supporting PG&E’s diverse work activities. 

PG&E is evolving to a multi-pronged approach to contractor safety, which includes targeted evaluations for existing high-risk contractors and overall programmatic improvements. By focusing on shared work and pursuing a common goal with our contractor partners and coworkers alike, we are developing integrated solutions as part of a comprehensive safety program and a unified partnership.

Our contractor safety program requires contractors performing medium- or high-risk work to meet prequalification requirements to perform work for or on behalf of PG&E. Our contractor safety standard and associated contractor safety oversight procedures set requirements for managing contract work, including procedural steps for each team. These procedures include providing post-job safety performance evaluations of contractor work and sharing lessons learned resulting from safety incidents. 

Contractors who perform medium- or high-risk work must notify PG&E of all SIF events—both potential and actual. Contractors investigate SIF-potential and SIF-actual events with support from PG&E to increase our learning from all types of serious incidents.

2023 milestones

Organizational culture and safety mindset:

• Implemented an Enterprise Leadership Development Program, which includes safety leadership training for supervisors and crew leads and an enterprise-wide safety recognition program.
• Embraced the CPUC’s adoption of the “10 Traits of a Healthy Safety Culture” as the framework for conducting a safety culture assessment.

PG&E safety excellence management system:

• Published our PSEMS manual, which includes our safety “stands” and the various governance structures and operational requirements that guide our safety journey.
• Conducted an enterprise-wide third-party gap assessment to verify alignment with the requirements within PSEMS.

Contractor safety:

• Developed an enterprise contractor safety assessment procedure to ensure our functional areas comply with our safety standards and completed assessments with nearly 20 functional areas.
• Implemented a comprehensive contractor safety quality assurance review process for our high-risk contract partners, which involved an in-depth review of contractor safety culture, programs, and workforce perceptions, facilitated with PG&E safety personnel.
• Improved our contractor training process and conducted more than 300 contractor driving safety program reviews.

Serious injuries and fatalities:

• Implemented a SIF Prevention Field Guide for our operational teams.
• Continued to leverage insights from safety observations of our coworkers and contract partners.

Transportation safety:

• Used a mobile app to enable coworkers to document 360-degree safety walkarounds of their vehicles; coworkers recorded over 1.9 million walkarounds. 
• Installed cell phone blocking technology within our vehicles to reduce preventable motor vehicle incidents—suppressing hundreds of thousands of inbound texts and calls while our teams travelled.
• Actively engaged with our contractors on driving safety by launching a “Slow Your Roll” campaign focused on preventing rollover accidents.

Occupational health and safety:

• Increased use of PG&E’s Health and Wellness Centers through targeted awareness campaigns.
• Focused on preventing musculoskeletal injuries through education and rapid response to discomfort cases and workstation evaluations.
• Deployed industrial athlete specialists to provide field-based coworkers with musculoskeletal education and early symptom intervention to avoid injuries, conducting over 12,000 events with approximately 130,000 participants.
• Implemented a Fatigue Management Standard and Toolkit, focusing on how to identify, prevent, and mitigate fatigue.
• Used data to develop injury prevention strategies to focus on our top injury types.

Personal safety in the field:

• Began using virtual reality scenarios to train field personnel in de-escalation techniques.

Measuring progress

Tragically, in 2023, one coworker and one team member from our contractor workforce lost their lives while working for PG&E and another two coworkers sustained serious injuries. No one should lose their life or sustain a serious injury while at work.

Compared to 2022, we saw a 9.4% increase in our employee OSHA rate and a 4% increase in our DART rate; however, both rates have declined 11.5% and 31%, respectively, compared to 2021. 

The data below provides PG&E employee safety statistics for 2021 through 2023:

1. The OSHA Recordable Rate measures how frequently OSHA-recordable occupational injuries and illnesses occur for every 200,000 hours worked, or for approximately every 100 employees
2. The DART Rate measures how frequently DART cases (injuries that result in days away, restricted or transferred duty) occur for every 200,000 hours worked, or for approximately every 100 employees.
3. The SIF rate measures how frequently SIF events occur for every 200,000 hours worked, or for approximately every 100 employees. A SIF event includes fatalities, life threatening injuries, and life altering injuries.
4. The SIF actual count includes fatalities, life threatening injuries, and life altering injuries.
5. Timely Reporting of Injuries is the percentage of work-related injuries reported to our 24/7 Nurse Care Line within one day of the incident, and for cumulative injuries, within one day of symptoms impacting work. 

For contractors performing work for PG&E, we have seen a downward trend in SIF incidents since 2021, with a 75% decrease in 2023 compared to 2022. OSHA and DART rates have also decreased compared to 2022, by 11% and 13%, respectively. 

The data below provides PG&E contractor safety statistics for 2021 through 2023:

1. The OSHA Recordable Rate measures how frequently OSHA recordable occupational injuries and illnesses occur for every 200,000 hours worked, or for approximately every 100 contractor employees.
2. The DART Rate measures how frequently DART cases (injuries that result in days away, restricted or transferred duty) occur for every 200,000 hours worked, or for approximately every 100 contractor employees.
3. The SIF rate measures how frequently SIF events occur for every 200,000 hours worked, or for approximately every 100 contractor employees. A SIF event includes fatalities, life threatening injuries, and life altering injuries.
4. The SIF actual count includes fatalities, life-threatening injuries, and life altering injuries.

PG&E also actively tracks several leading indicators that can inform adjustments that need to be made before a potential incident occurs. They include:

• Timely reporting of injuries through our Nurse Care Line
• Safe driving rate, measuring hard braking and hard acceleration behavior in PG&E motor vehicles
• High energy exposure and essential controls findings gathered from observations by our field safety specialists