MIT Sloan Management Review Article on How Workplace Safety Improves Performance

OSHA’s longest-serving administrator identifies safety approaches that work — and those that don’t.

Chasing lower labor costs, most of the United States’ toy and game companies have relocated production outside the country, primarily to Asia. One of the only remaining game manufacturing facilities in the U.S., in East Longmeadow, Massachusetts, was originally operated by Hasbro but is now run by Cartamundi, a Belgian company that manufactures products for Hasbro. It is a unionized factory in a state with high wage, tax, and energy costs.

The reason Hasbro didn’t follow the rest of the industry to Asia is that this factory runs much more efficiently than the ones that moved. Through a voluntary safety program under the umbrella of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), the plant’s managers and workers collaborate to find and fix safety hazards and, in doing so, have made the plant dramatically more productive. In fact, in 2017, Hasbro determined that it would be cost-effective to bring Play-Doh production back from Asia and manufacture it in Massachusetts.

About the Author

David Michaels, Ph.D., is a professor at the Milken Institute School of Public Health at George Washington University. He served as U.S. assistant secretary of labor for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration from 2009 to January 2017. Under President Clinton, he served as assistant secretary for environment, safety, and health, charged with protecting workers, community, and environment around nuclear weapons facilities.

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