Pushing the Edge with Southern Company: What Real Safety Leadership Looks Like
“Good morning” turned into a great conversation when I sat down with David Myers (VP, Safety & Training) and Chris Hutzler (Director, Safety & Health) from Southern Company, fresh off being voted the Corporate Winner of the Safety On The Edge Excellence Award at our inaugural Berkeley conference in March. This wasn’t a trophy for cosmetics or low injury rates; it was a peer-voted recognition of courage, culture, and leadership that actually changes how work is done.
Why their win matters
Southern serves ~9 million customers with ~30,000 employees across the U.S. – coal to solar, gas to transmission. Big, complex, and high-risk. Their win was less about polished dashboards and more about a mindset shift: stop chasing numbers, start building trust. The award format mattered too – ten minutes on stage to make their case, and the global audience voted. Their peers said, “Yes – this is what good looks like.”
Letting go of the old game
David and Chris were direct: the industry’s obsession with recordables can warp behavior. When the score is the star, people start managing the metric instead of managing the risk. Southern decided to stop doing things “because everyone else does,” and doubled down on frontline engagement – listening deeply, responding well, and making it easy to tell the inconvenient truth.
A story that changed everything
At one point, leaders were spending time on a sprained ankle, while two very serious close calls barely registered because they weren’t “recordable.” That mismatch snapped attention to what matters: critical risks. Southern now focuses on the tasks and conditions where consequences are serious – even if the probability is low – and treats near misses as gold, not noise. Southern Company started the focus on critical risk management in 2017, long before the rest of the utility industry started catching up on SIF risk control management.
Care is a control
Another shift: medical management that prioritizes healing over the rush to keep numbers pretty. Strains and sprains got better outcomes – and trust grew – when employees saw leaders invest in proper treatment and recovery time, not just early returns to hit a target. It sent a simple, powerful message: we care about you, not the chart.
Leadership that shapes culture
This transformation stuck because executives modeled it. Leaders learned that their response – to a mistake, a signal, a concern – is culture. Southern moved from scrutinizing individuals to examining systems and controls: what made the right thing hard, the wrong thing easy? They embraced learning over blame, and continuous improvement over “arrived.”
What’s next on the edge
Two big frontiers:
1. The new workforce. With experienced hands retiring, Southern is re-testing controls and training for people who learn differently and arrive from other industries. Technology, coaching, and gamified learning are on the table – but the values stay firm: manage critical risk, learn relentlessly, and keep improving.
2. Speed of change. Energy tech is moving fast; culture has to move with it. Agility in methods, stability in values.
Why they keep showing up
For both David and Chris, the motivation is deeply personal. They see their own families in the workforce. Safety isn’t an abstract KPI; it’s someone’s mom or dad coming home. When new hires say, “Here, safety is real,” that’s fuel.
The takeaway
Southern Company’s story is a reminder that safety leadership is not a metric – it’s a stance. Stop glorifying the score. Start obsessing over critical risks, quality of response, and human care. When people believe you mean it, they speak up. When they speak up, you learn. When you learn, you prevent what really hurts.
That’s Safety On The Edge. And that’s why Southern’s peers put them on the podium.<