City Sees Improvements in Employee Safety Through Various Initiatives
Published on August 10, 2026
Three years after the successful rollout of trash and recycling carts, the City of Syracuse continues to see improvements in all areas of workplace safety, including decreases in employee injuries and claim costs. By replacing antiquated reaction-based protocols with proactive, data-driven safety systems the City is ensuring that workplace hazards and injuries are mitigated before they occur.
“Employees returning home in the same condition they came to work in and serve our City is a top priority for my administration,” said Mayor Sharon F. Owens. “From our sanitation workers to our snowplow drivers to our water and parks maintenance crews, having systems in place that reduce safety hazards and provide support to injured employees promotes a work environment where our employees are able to keep themselves and their colleagues safe while providing the highest level of service that keeps our City running.”
The semi-automation of the City’s trash and recycling pick-up system in 2023 showed that proactively targeting prominent workplace hazards such as heavy manual lifting with solutions that mitigate the hazard has demonstrated a positive impact on employee safety and fiscal operations. The roll out of trash and recycling carts eliminated the number of shoulder injuries in the Waste Collection Bureau from 41% of Citywide shoulder injuries in 2022 to 0% of Citywide shoulder injuries in 2025 and reduced shoulder injury-related claims from $147,000 in 2022 to $0 in 2025.
Following this model of proactive hazard prevention, the City hosted a Slip, Trip, and Fall Simulator training for the second year in a row. Slips, trips, and falls are the dominant type of injury across City departments, incurring nearly $950,000 in injury claims from 2023 to 2025. The Slip, Trip, and Fall simulator, a hands-on machine that simulates various physical safety hazards, equipped over 500 employees with the skills and environmental awareness to safely navigate the hazardous conditions a Syracuse winter brings.
“The City has made remarkable strides in moving away from outdated, behavior-based safety models,” said Risk and Safety Manager, Lisa Schmidt. “Instead, we have institutionalized safety systems that are trusted by our frontline workforce and constantly evaluated for data-driven efficacy. This simulator is not an isolated initiative; it is the visible symbol of a modern, systems-first safety culture.”
Alongside implementing physical solutions for employee safety hazards, the City has invested in initiatives that work to proactively promote a workplace culture of trust in safety protocols. In 2026, the City implemented a mandatory 30-hour Occupational Safety and Health Administration training to help managers in the Departments of Water, Public Works, and Parks and Recreation, a process which decreased new claim costs by 73% in the first five months of 2026. These controls help employees learn from past workplace injuries to prevent similar injuries and hazards from occurring in the future and inform future safety training requirements and system implementation.
A structured, transitional stay-at-work program implemented in 2024 supports workers injured on the job by allowing them to return to work at limited capacity during recovery, helping them stay connected and engaged in a supportive work environment. This program has helped workers recover and return to work faster, improving their overall physical, mental, and financial wellbeing while driving down overall claim costs by 50.3% in 2025.
The City is proud of its facilitation of proactive, data-driven safety initiatives that improve workplace safety, support employees who have been injured, and reduce claim costs, and will continue to implement informed, intentional systems to keep its employees safe on the job.