Safety leadership is more than overseeing the general day-to-day of your organization’s safety program. Leading is about influencing employees and colleagues to meet the goals of your organization and safely fulfill their roles.

Do you have a great job in EHS? What is a great job? Excellent, enriched jobs have the following characteristics:

Sad but true. In 2020, OSHA celebrates its 50th anniversary. Safety’s sage, Dan Petersen, published “Safety Management, a Human Approach” in 1975. Lessons haven’t been learned. 

Unfortunately, many organizations have a false perception that merely employing someone in a safety capacity is a risk control, as in, “Your Honor, we did our due diligence in safety… see, we hired a Safety Person (points to the ‘Safety Person’).”

It is called the Batter’s Eye. You can find one in every Major League Baseball park and stadium. But the question is, where are they located? And the next question is, how do they work?

The union steward had just recounted an incident where a supervisor asked one of his workers to step into standing water to work on corroded gauges near the coker. The work needed to be done immediately as it would delay ongoing maintenance on the fractionator to take on different stock feed.

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.