How time flies. Remember back to Anaheim, an unusual California October morning rainstorm, and the National Safety Congress? Here is the state of the market, as seen through the lens of the NSC:

• Combustible dust is the danger du jour.  NFPA combustible standard 652 is enforced by insurance companies and local fire codes. A hot issue.
• Industrial hygiene exposure analytics is coming on strong and will only get bigger.
• Wireless connectivity with remote sensors for facility safety and PPE / personal safety is hot and will get hotter.
• Coming soon: increasing use of smartphones by employees (either their own or company provided) to take photos and videos of hazards and dangerous conditions, which are then sent to the safety department And safety department can send emergency text messages to employees via smartphones.
• Smartphones will be big in safety, especially as millennials take over most safety and health jobs.
• Tracking PPE use and condition of equipment via wireless is big and getting bigger.
• Tracking worker health biodata is big and getting bigger. (Reduce healthcare costs.)
• OSHA in next two months will issue the walking/working surface – fall protection for general industry standard – 25 years in the making. (OSHA did issue the standard weeks after the NSC).
• Slips, trips and falls will be a big deal. Flooring and spill cleanup products will be a bigger ad category.
• Dropped object protection is big and getting bigger. A standard is coming, from ISEA or ASSE/ANSI.
• Back of hand protection standard is coming. Will set levels of protection for gloves against weights of impact on back of hand.
• OSHA in 2017 will begin requiring companies to submit recordkeeping via computers. Recordkeeping software will be a bigger market.
• Hot training topic: managing fatigue, recognizing hazards of fatigue and what to do about it.
• Hot training topic: how to prevent workplace violence, educating workers on causes and what to do if caught in an active shooter situation. Much workplace violence is tied to domestic abuse.
• Oil and gas market expectations for 2017 are low. No one expects a strong rebound.
• Cut-resistant gloves are the hottest types of gloves due to new tough cut-resistant fabrics.
• Fall protection remains a hot market, due to hazards of working on communication/cell towers, wind turbine farms, installing solar panels, construction industry.
• Hardgoods manufacturers (PPE and others) are diversifying into services.
• Everyone’s talking about data like never before in safety. Market players are now in the business of selling information, not just products. Data collection via sensors on PPE, on people (Fitbit), on facility monitoring networks, on devices/tablets/smartphones used for inspections and audits and recordkeeping is a big deal. So is analyzing the data.
• Safety departments are swamped with work (lean staffs) and don’t have the time or money or IT savvy to analyze all the data coming in. So vendors will package and analyze the data for them, for a price.
• Game change time: The longstanding ways companies have managed safety is and will dramatically change as tech innovations and data slice and dice analysis finally makes its way into safety.
• Incentives and incentive programs are getting a bad rap because OSHA (and many safety pros) think prizes lead to hiding injuries.