The word “disruptor” is used many times to describe people who purposefully instigate arguments, sow confusion or doubt, stall progress and use any of these tactics for their own benefit,” says Cory Worden, M.S., CSP with 22 years of experience in healthcare safety.

Cory’s description is what gives disruptor the negative baggage that many pros want nothing to do with. Who wants to be a disorderly trouble-maker, irritant, annoyance, egotistical good-doer or self-righteous fanatic?

“It’s certainly not a term I would use,” says Glenn Murray, retired corporate EHS leader for ExxonMobil.

“I have talked to many safety pros over the years who see their job as influencing workers, management and organizations,” says Doug Pontsler, a former vice president of operations sustainability and EHS for Owens Corning. “Disruption requires a certain amount of muscling in many cases, as we’ve seen in recent weeks in Washington. And many safety pros don’t have that muscle, that authority, nor that broad view of how exactly to disrupt an organization.”

Mark Hansen, MS, CSP, doesn’t lack for verve or nerve. He has no problem wearing the disruptor mantle. “I am a disruptor and I’m proud of it. I have been a disruptor when a situation needs disrupting.

Petya Georgieva, MS, CSP, also does shy away from the disruptor label. “Selecting EHS as a career path instantly puts you in the disruptor seat,” she says. “Our KPIs are the ugliest in an organization. They represent injured people, and no number should be acceptable.”

Like Hansen, Georgieva does not equate disruption with wreaking havoc or battering ram trauma. Asked to name the attributes of a safety and health disruptor, she puts “curiosity” at the head of the list.

“Curiosity to never stop learning new trends, new technologies, new ideas, new approaches and the ability to convert these into proactive strategies to advance performance,” she explains.

She names other characteristics: “Audacity to be bold and different and to be OK with feeling uncomfortable in uncomfortable situations. Resilience to keep trying even when everyone else has given up. Humbleness to lead from the heart with empathy. If we don’t demonstrate genuine care for others, no one would believe the cause and follow the progress we strive to promote.”

And she advises, “have a pinch of a sense of humor. It’s not healthy to take yourself too seriously, especially when things don’t happen as anticipated.”

Nuanced and realistic disruption

This is a nuanced and realistic take on being a disruptor.  “I define a safety disruptor as someone who is brave enough to challenge the status quo, but also practical enough to understand the needs of the business and propose solutions to benefit both the people and the performance,” says Georgieva.

“Humbleness,” “empathy,” “a sense of humor,” “being practical” and “not taking yourself too seriously” are far from the negative attributes often tied to being a disruptor. It’s not all a matter of having muscle and going toe-to-toe with senior management.  

Mark Hansen, with decades of experience, knows that. His tools are not a hammer, blowtorch or bulldozer. He often conducts a gap analysis “that takes subjective information and converts it into objective measures that compels management to act.” He develops a plan and makes sure to get CEO buy-in. He does not approach turn-around situations as if he’s trying to redirect a thousand-foot ocean freighter. What he does like to bring is “Shock and Awe.” He values speed when disrupting. “I move fast so the workforce don’t have a chance to oppose my plan. Once I implement the plan, they see the light.”

Disruptor: A compliment or a threat?

Sometimes safety and health pros don’t know whether they are being disruptors or not. Cory Worden has been in that position. “In response to the umpteenth communication from me regarding the need for a methodical safety management system, a hospital chief operations officer said, ‘You’re like a dog with a bone when it comes to this stuff.’ I didn’t know if he meant that as a compliment of a veiled threat, but I had apparently disrupted his business as usual.”

“I also had a senior vice president of quality, patient safety and infection protection yell at me about how my recommendations were ‘too complicated and never work.’ I was asking for a job safety analysis to identify potential hazards, necessary risk controls, determine which employees were affected, and then train them to use the risk controls. But the “disruption’ was because the organization’s business-as-usual was to point out hazards and remind employees to ‘be careful.’ Anything else was a disruption. Once, when I went to their conference room to be told I was a ‘disruptor,’   they forgot to erase a whiteboard that had their priorities listed in order from one to ten. ‘Employee Safety’ was listed at number ten.”

It's not always the case that a safety and health pro identifies himself or herself as a disruptor, as with Mark Hansen and Petya Georgieva. Sometimes the organization will pin that label on a pro. “It’s very telling of an organization and its leaders to see what they consider a ‘disruption’ and whether those disruptions are considered a positive or a negative,” says Worden. “Oten, positive disruptions are called ‘change agents’ and are purposefully brought into the organization. What leaders consider negative disruptions are those things they don’t want to see or hear about. If safety is considered a negative disruption, that’s unfortunate. I’ve seen many safety professionals realize it was time to leave an organization because they were perpetually considered a negative disruption.”

Time for some positive disruption

I think here in 2025, workplace safety and health, broadly speaking, could use some positive disruption. Consider:

• Workers killed on the job jumped 15 percent from 2013 to 2023, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The rate of serious injuries and fatalities (SIF) has flatlined in the last decade, according to the Edison Electric Institute.
• More half of Environmental Health & Safety (EHS) leaders report injury frequency (53%) and severity (51%) have either remained stagnant or worsened in the past year, according to Benchmark Gensuite’s 2025 EHS Benchmarking report. In the same survey, 79% believe hazards and near misses are underreported.
• In the 2022 “PPE Pain Points Study” by JJ Keller, more than 80 percent of respondents said they often have issues with employees not following proper PPE protocols, particularly head protection. And what was the compliance problem? Almost three-quarters of employees (73 percent) “Just didn’t want to wear it.” Half said they didn’t think head protection was necessary, and half said it made the job more difficult. Folks, the first “hard-boiled hat” was made in 1919. The first thermoplastic hard hat was made in 1952, more than 70 years ago, and the first polyethylene helmet was introduced in the 1960s. More than 100 years later, wearing a hard hat is still a major headache for many professionals.
• In early February, The Washington Post wrote an expose on a Phenix, Ala, lumber yard, a house of horrors straight out of Upton Sinclair’s 1906 book, “The Jungle.” At the lumber yard, workers had lost fingers, broken bones and been mangled by machines — at least 28 employees had reported injuries at company with only about 50 employees. Three had died in gruesome incidents. Some workers said they would pray before the start of their $9-an-hour shifts. For years the company was cited by OSHA for failing to follow lockout-tagout procedures. “Our job is to keep the mill running and not let the mill be down any longer that we have to,“ said a manager. Another manager blamed employees, saying that “they are lazy and don’t want to” follow the rules. Finally, city officials took a step that federal regulators couldn’t — it immediately closed down Phenix Lumber until building and fire code problems were fixed. Negotiations dragged on and the mayor and city council voted unanimously to revoke Phenix’s Lumber’s business license. Last month, Phenix Lumber filed for bankruptcy. It had assets of less than $50,000 and liabilities of more than $50 million. That included $2.47 million in OSHA penalties.

Across the country, low-salary workers needlessly put their lives at risk, especially in smaller businesses operating on the cheap for the sake of production first. In 2025 there shouldn’t be place for such safety and health neglect.

Safety and health professionals should think less negatively about taking on the disruptor role. There are ways of disrupting a stagnant or failing program through innovation, embracing technology, adding value and being an enabler — enabling the success of a company or organization. Ask questions. Provoke thinking. Do your homework. Disruption is not a zero-sum game — safety and health wins, the organization loses.

Still, not every safety and health professional is wired to be an aggressive agent provocateur or disruptor. But professionals can use recordkeeping data, audits, hazard inventories, risk assessments and incident analyses to provoke critical thinking, breakthrough ideas and plans, and if needed, make leaders and workers uncomfortable with subpar safety and health performance.