Fostering a culture of safety: Highlights from the 2025 Ara Safety Summits

Last month, Ara Partners hosted two Safety Summits, one in Dublin and one in Houston, bringing together 70 leaders from across the portfolio to share best practices, explore the future of workforce safety, and strengthen organizational approaches to safety.

Across our portfolio, we view safety as a critical component of operational excellence. These events demonstrate our commitment to leadership, safety, and continuous improvement. 

Both summits offered meaningful insights and actionable takeaways—one grounded in tools and procedures, the other in people and culture. Together, they underscored that effective safety performance requires both structure and shared commitment.

Sessions focused on evolving safety practices and leadership in process safety 

The first summit in Dublin focused on tactical solutions for improving performance. Speakers held sessions on evolving trends in workplace safety, advanced incident investigation techniques, and leadership in process safety. px Group’s Mark Kenrick delivered a participant favorite with his presentation on “moving beyond zero,” which challenged organizations to keep improving even after reaching strong safety records. 

One week later, the Houston Summit shifted focus to the cultural foundations of safety. The event emphasized building a values-driven approach, centered on leadership and frontline empowerment. Genera’s Lee Wyatt delivered a standout presentation on the “PRO” framework for safety engagement, offering a practical approach to hazard recognition and communication that fosters everyday accountability across teams. 

Key themes surrounding building and sustaining resilient safety cultures  

• Leadership sets the tone. A strong safety culture begins at the top. Leadership alignment and clear, consistent communication are essential to empowering teams and setting expectations. True resilience requires more than systems and procedures; it depends on transformational leadership that builds trust and drives lasting change.  

• Safety maturity is a journey. Safety isn’t a simple yes-or-no checkbox. Beyond compliance lies a broader opportunity: to build a culture of continuous learning, improvement, and accountability. The summits reinforced that safety excellence evolves over time, and even high-performing organizations can keep moving forward. 

• From lagging to leading. Relying solely on past incidents to measure safety can leave blind spots. Participants stressed the need to shift from lagging to leading indicators—outlining proactive metrics that help prevent harm before it happens. A resilient safety culture focuses not just on what went wrong, but on what can go right. 

• Shared challenges, honest conversations. Attendees found value in hearing candid stories and lessons from peers. Resource constraints and shifting priorities are common hurdles regardless of company location, industry, or team size. Leaders used the summits as a platform to explore those challenges openly and collaboratively.  

The summits reinforced that safety is not a fixed destination, but a shared and evolving effort. Ara is proud to support a culture of shared learning, and we’re excited to deepen these conversations as we continue to encourage safe, resilient operations across our portfolio.