Thought Leadership

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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.

Shortly after taking office, the head of the Labor Department's Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) acknowledged the troubling slow pace at which new worker safety regulations are put in place.