Articles by David Sarkus MS, CSP

Leaders should care deeply about their people, no question. But in the world of EHS, caring can drift into something unintended when it is not paired with courage, standards, and accountability. 

Our excessive focus on the concept of risk comes at the expense of fostering the essential leadership needed to navigate acceptable levels of risk.

Individual oversights and errors can and will eventually lead to unwanted consequences. However, we need multiple checks and balances that limit fallout and the continuance of loss, or possibly, an egregious event.

The knowledge gap within utilities, construction, and related industries is more of a growing concern than ever — especially when it comes to serious injuries and exposures. 

Not many people walk around throughout their day with a risk assessment in hand. We should, however, always have an informal risk assessment tool in our mind that allows us to perform at least a cursory assessment until we can dig deeper or in a more formal way.

During my college summer breaks, I worked at a few different high-risk construction sites. On one job, I had a boss who liked to holler and was not very well liked. He was known as Hog Jaws and I’ve mentioned him previously.  

Twenty-five years ago, as a young safety professional, I struggled to find a set of leadership practices I could call my own. In 1996, I wrote about many of the leadership practices I was already using but found more clearly established in Servant Leadership (Sarkus, 1996).