Thou shalt not kill. People have been using rules to protect people since man left the primordial forest and walked up right for the first time. For people some rules are sacred—they are worshipped for their own sake. For others, rules were meant to be broken. Irrespective of your view of rules, they form the foundation of society of all levels.

At ASSE’s Professional Development Conference for the past several years there has been a session entitled Executive Safety Summit. A panel of CEOs or senior managers and a moderator discuss their views of safety. Good stuff. Near the end of the session is the most important question: What are your recommendations for the safety professionals in attendance here today? The above title was one answer.

Twas the night before Christmas
And all through the shop
All the elves were busy working
Even Snap, Crackle, and Pop

Lately, I've been doing a fair amount of management training in the past few months. What I often see is safety folks, both full-time and part-time, who are struggling to do the compliance thing and a management team that is perfectly happy to let them struggle. Essentially nothing has changed in the 44 years I've been doing occupational safety. The problem is most basic---no one wants to see people hurt but neither do they see safety as a core element of their company culture.

I have visited several gas plants across the US. Gas plants are complex facilities. They operate at pressure with flammable materials and dangerous products. Gas plants are regulated by Process Safety Management standards to address the inherent hazards of operations. 

People make mistakes; it’s what makes us human. The propensity for human error is practically embedded in our DNA. While the idiom holds that there is no use crying over spilled milk, might there not be some benefit in examining the causes, contributors, and catalysts associated with poor decision-making?

It’s often said that hard work never hurt anybody. It’s a cliché with which occupational health folks and thousands of injured workers would undoubtedly disagree. And while tragic and often preventable physical injuries may be the easiest to see and document, other work-related health risks are much harder to pick up on. One such risk is depression.