Thought Leadership

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Many of you are able to think back to your personal realities world in 1970. I was a recently graduated, just-married engineer working in an experimental pesticide development laboratory. An ongoing assignment dealt with how to get rid of our toxic wastes in (then legal) tidal area landfills of the San Francisco bay area.

The fourth annual iSHN Virtual Safety Expo (2013 edition) presented by ISHN will be here before you know it. To attend, all you need to do is fill out the form to register on ISHN’s homepage. Click on the Virtual Trade Show icon in the right column. Or go straight to www.ishnvirtual.com. The event is free. Here is the lineup of speakers and presentations:

In the classic movie, Casablanca, whenever a crime took place the police gathered up the “usual suspects” to show that they were taking action. The usual suspects regularly got blamed but were seldom the true guilty parties. At the end of the movie, even when they were sure of who committed the crime, they simply went through the motions to satisfy those in control...

Perhaps the best thing about working in Organizational Development is that I don’t hang around any one industry for protracted periods of time; I basically am called into solve a problem, that, once solved, eliminates the need for my services.

It’s been such a long time since OSHA issued a major standards proposal covering millions of workers, such as its recent silica dust proposed rule, it’s fair to ask: Are the standards floodgates opening? (I’m not counting hazcom revised/GHS, which was more or less forced on the U.S. and OSHA by globalization.)

I began to get deeply involved in helping organizations achieve safety culture excellence back in the 1980s. At that point in my career, I was in charge of manufacturing engineering for a Fortune 20 company.

Hazard analysis is a key to appropriately protecting workers from dangers in the workplace, but too often we do a mediocre job. Protecting workers from the hazards they are likely to encounter can’t be a half measure and most workplaces would benefit from better and more accurate hazard analysis and risk management.

I love being a safety speaker, I love my audience and I love the impact I have on their lives. I have always enjoyed being in front of an audience. Sunday morning during a special announcement at church, I was reminded not everyone is as comfortable speaking in public.
 

RIF, Recordable Injury Frequency, the worldwide standard for judging safety performance, is often talked about as inadequate, but in actuality is seldom, if ever, replaced. Why use this concept?

As a safety speaker, I have the opportunity to visit many different work locations each year. Fortunately, my clients have me back year after year to do an entirely different presentation so I become familiar with their location. The challenge is the first visit.