Safety in Action® 2026: How Leaders Make Safety Measurable

May 20, 2026Corporate

Safety in Action® 2026: A Stage for Strong Safety Leadership – from the Frontline to the C-Suite

A highlight of the conference was the Leadership Summit, a unique one-day event designed for leaders defining the future of safety at work. If safety is your mission, the Summit was your moment. Whether you run a plant, lead an HSE team, or carry safety responsibility at the C‑level, the summit focused on what truly shapes your day-to-day reality – concrete strategies, meaningful metrics, and the question of how to make your organization sustainably safer. DEKRA North America deliberately designed the overall conference with a “by safety professionals, for safety professionals” approach. The focus was on peer-to-peer exchange, benchmarking with other companies, and practical approaches that can be applied directly back on site.

Safety in the Workplace and where it Becomes Leadership Priority

Participants used the Safety in Action® Leadership Summit 2026 to connect with people facing similar challenges: How do I balance operational pressure and safe operations? Which leading indicators tell me early if we, as an organization, are on the right track? And how do I encourage teams not just to know safety rules, but to live them?

One of the key inputs came from neuroscience-based safety: decisions, readiness to change, and risk perception are all strongly shaped in the brain. This underlines how powerful your role as a leader is – for example, when your behavior sends signals about openness, a learning mindset, and risk awareness. Complementing this, sessions on leading indicators, operational excellence, and human performance showed how to make safety work measurable and integrate it into business strategy.

Safety in Action isn’t just about learning – it’s about transformation. Our goal is to bring together people who don’t just manage safety, they define what it means. From executives to frontline leaders, attendees come away with strategies that change how safety lives in their organizations.

Ph. D. Angelica Grindle, Vice President and Executive Sponsor of the Safety in Action® Conference.

As the organizer of the event, DEKRA brings decades of experience in safety, risk, and organizational development. For safety leaders around the globe, this means access to proven expertise, cross-industry best practices, and practical tools that help you advance your own safety goals.

Safety Icon Awards – Innovators who Make the Difference

A highlight of the 2026 Safety in Action® Conference was the Safety Icon Awards. They made visible what the event as a whole demonstrated: the strength, commitment, and leadership driving safety performance across the Americas region.

For DEKRA North America, it was especially powerful to see leaders from different industries come together, challenge their own thinking, share insights, and strengthen the connections that move the industry forward. The conference clearly showed that these organizations make safety an integral part of how they operate and lead.

The presentation of the Safety Icon Awards increasingly reinforced the impressions gathered beforehand. This year, among others, the following were honored:

Matt Garner, Vice President Health, Safety, Environment and Regulatory at Expand Energy
Dwayne Chapel, Safety Coordinator at Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD)
ACHS, Asociación Chilena de Seguridad

They represent the very best of our industry – leaders and organizations who shape culture, influence everyday behavior, and deliver meaningful, lasting improvements in safety performance. Their work shows that consistent leadership, strong data, and credible behavior create role models – and with them, the foundation for real change.

For DEKRA, the Safety in Action® Conference is clearly more than a date on the calendar. It is a powerful signal from the region about where safety is heading. DEKRA teams across the Americas, together with partners and participants, have created an event that raises the bar. The energy and momentum coming out of this year’s conference show what is possible in the years ahead – in companies, in teams, and in the way we talk about safety