We do all we can to provide safe products and a safe environment in which our employees work. And we also have programs in place to protect them off the job.

Since the program began, we’ve collectively touched 550,000 employees, family members, members of the communities where we live and work and customers through the numerous outreach activities.

550,000 EMPLOYEES, FAMILY MEMBERS & MEMBERS OF THE COMMUNITY REACHED

These are a few of the programs we provide to our employees to ensure their safety after they leave the premises:

Vehicle Safety

Drowsy Driving Campaign

Monsanto invited Kerrie Warne, from Tyler Raising Education/Awareness for Driving Drowsy (TyREDD), and Matthew Uhles, from the Clayton Sleep Institute, to speak to employees about the dangers of drowsy driving.

Warne created the organization TyREDD to advocate about the dangers of driving while drowsy after her son, Tyler Warne, was tragically killed in a drowsy driving car accident.

Drowsy driving or sleepiness can impair drivers by causing slower reaction times, vision impairment, lapses in judgment and delays in processing information. It is a major traffic safety problem that is largely unrecognized.

At Monsanto, we do all we can to keep employees informed on a variety of safety topics such as vehicle safety, including defensive driving, controlling your speed, how to prevent rollover accidents, seatbelt usage, texting and driving, and drowsy driving.

We feel the message is vital for all of us, whether parents of teenagers, shift workers, people working long hours, or simply anyone who drives.  The feedback we received following the presentation from Monsanto colleagues around the world has been overwhelmingly positive, as it’s a topic that is not discussed frequently enough.

Anti-Venom Outreach

With so many of our employees working in rural areas, poisonous bites are a concern. We’ve found that the best practice for dealing with venomous bites is to put prevention first. Monsanto’s Anti-venom Program was introduced in 2011 and in its first year, it saved the lives of two farmers for which we received a SAFE Community Award.

Tactics included creating awareness, maintaining “No Panic” situations during emergencies, effective sharing of information, making anti-venom kits available in 24-hour hospitals, maintaining kits on sites and combating unscientific and superstitious methods of snake-bite treatment.

To date, this program has saved as many as 38 people within the communities in which we operate.

Emergency Preparedness Campaign

According to the Red Cross, in North America, nearly 60 percent of Americans are wholly unprepared for a disaster of any kind, while 54 percent don’t prepare because they believe a disaster is unlikely to affect them.

Our people worked with the Red Cross and launched a 4-year North American campaign to develop a Global Home Emergency Preparedness initiative. This program gives employees the supplies and information they might need during an emergency and educates them on the need to be prepared.

Eventually this program will benefit employees worldwide, with programs tailored to specific threats in each region. For example, our St. Louis employees will be informed on tornado preparedness, while California employees may be briefed on earthquake and wildfire preparedness, and other employees around the world will be informed on best-practices for their local threats.

Additionally, our team sponsored a contest in which each employee was given a Red Cross Emergency Preparedness checklist and asked to fill it out at home with their family. Five participating employees were drawn at random and awarded home emergency preparedness gear worth $250.

As a company committed to safety we do all we can to provide our employees the knowledge and resources to be more safe not just at work but in their homes as well.