ITT has achieved a high level of success in Environment, Safety & Health (ESH). We are a progressive, proactive leader and a responsible industrial citizen.

But we can further improve our ESH performance, and the key will be individual accountability. While our company has built a deep and effective ESH organization, filled with professionals who are always striving to go “beyond compliance,” we want all of our employees to take – and feel – personal responsibility for their part in this effort. In short, it’s never somebody else’s job to make sure we are being safe, staying informed or doing the right thing for the environment.

We have great examples of the power of personal accountability and many of our locations already consider ESH issues in all of their decisions and actions. Our industrial pump operation in Chongwon, Korea, has gone more than 13 years and 800,000 hours without a recordable worksite accident. Why? Because general manager I.K. Kim and his top supervisors have personally involved themselves in plant safety, walking through the facility each day doing a safety check and reminding all employees to inspect their own machines and areas. The result is an incredible safety record and an ISO 14001 registration, which the plant earned in May 2005 after making it a priority project only six months before. That’s what can be accomplished when personal accountability is in place at every level of a business, and our goal is to expand it beyond isolated pockets and into the broader organization.

In 2005, the historic improvements we have experienced in many of our ESH metrics slowed dramatically. Some of this is due to organizational flux – new facilities, business divestitures, and new people – but it’s also a reflection of our need to invest all our people with ownership of our ESH goals. We have accomplished great things through the focused efforts of our ESH coordinators and those locations that already have individual accountability in place; we will accomplish much more when every ITT employee shares in this responsibility.