In the life sciences industry, safety is the foundation of everything we do. As a result, facilities management in this sector differs significantly from other environments because of the precision and care required to protect employees, research and most importantly, the health of patients. Through our work, we have seen firsthand how safety in life sciences goes beyond following regulations or checking a box to become a matter of building a culture of trust and accountability.
A Controlled Environment with Unique Demands
In industries like construction, variables change daily as sites evolve and conditions shift depending on what work is being done. However, life sciences facilities operate in a different way. They are controlled, highly regulated environments where processes are necessarily stable and predictable. That consistency provides a unique opportunity to design and enforce rigorous safety standards.
But with this level of control also comes complexity. For example, GMP (Good Manufacturing Practice) cleaning requires precise, physically demanding work like cleaning ceilings, walls and floors without ever kneeling or resting a hand on a surface. It’s meticulous, repetitive and often requires wet cleaning, which introduces risks like slips and falls less common in other industries.
Aligning Safety and Compliance
Life sciences facilities operate under strict regulatory frameworks. Every task, from equipment cleaning to waste removal, is tied to compliance, but compliance alone does not guarantee safety. Our role is to analyze the tasks presented by operations, whether it’s emptying dumpsters or maintaining cleanrooms, and evaluate the risks involved.
As part of our roles, we ask questions like, “are we overburdening a single employee with repetitive, physically strenuous tasks?” or “can we re-design processes to distribute workload more evenly?”. By introducing these considerations, we not only ensure compliance but also reduce hazards and foster a safer, more efficient workplace.
In practice, this means continually leveraging quality teams to review and improve safety steps. These systems give us a framework, but the value comes from how we adapt them to real-world conditions.
Building a Safety Culture
Perhaps the greatest challenge is not writing procedures but building a culture where safety is everyone’s responsibility. Culture is forged in daily interactions — how leaders respond to mistakes, how teams handle setbacks and how much input employees feel they have in shaping their work.
No one comes to work hoping to get hurt. When employees suggest safer ways of completing tasks, dismissing their input undermines both safety and morale. By contrast, listening, adapting and empowering frontline workers to contribute creates ownership and accountability. Initiatives like our Safe Spaces campaign open these conversations, encouraging supervisors to lead honest discussions and creating environments where employees feel safe raising concerns.
Near-miss Reporting and Leading Indicators
A turning point in our safety journey has been the emphasis on hazard and near-miss reporting. Too often, organizations view increased reporting as a sign of unsafe conditions. We see it differently. Near-miss reporting shows that employees are engaged, paying attention and willing to speak up before issues escalate.
To paraphrase Paul O’Neill, former CEO of Alcoa, near misses are a leading indicator of cultural progress. They reveal risks early, allowing us to intervene before an injury occurs. At ISS, we’ve challenged our teams to identify hazards before they find us. The results speak for themselves: reductions in lost-time incidents across sites and measurable improvements in employee well-being.
Traditionally, safety performance is judged on lagging indicators like recordable incidents or lost-time injuries — metrics that only tell us what has already gone wrong. While these remain important, they do little to drive proactive improvement.
We are shifting focus toward leading indicators; that is, the number of hazards identified, near misses reported and hours of training completed. These inputs, rather than outputs, show us whether our systems are working and help us investigate issues more quickly, capturing accurate evidence and adjusting processes before harm occurs.
For example, a slip on a newly resurfaced floor might first be attributed to employee carelessness. A deeper investigation, however, reveals that environmental changes made the surface hazardous. Without timely reporting and analysis, we would miss the root cause and fail to prevent future incidents.
The Human Side of Safety
At the heart of it all, safety is psychological. Rules and protocols matter, but meaningful connections between leaders and frontline teams matter more. When employees believe their voices are heard and they see leaders respond to their feedback, safety transforms from a checklist into a shared cultural value.
Our goal is simple — every person should go home in the same condition they arrived. Achieving that requires more than compliance. It takes cultural change, active listening and a focus on leading indicators that measure not just the absence of harm but also the presence of trust and vigilance.
As we continue to build and refine this culture, we know the work is never finished. Safety is not a destination, but rather an ongoing journey of learning and growth that seeks to improve people’s lives.
