EHS Today - Spring 2024

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High-tech tools and an emphasis on individual learning are improving the e ectiveness of safety training. p. 10 The Value of Education p. 12 2024 Regulatory Outlook p. 14 Potential AI Use Cases p. 18 Happiness at Work p. 24 The Continuing Evolution of Safety Training ehstoday.com SPRING 2024 THE MAGAZINE FOR ENVIRONMENT, HEALTH AND SAFETY LEADERS
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Cover Story

The Continuing Evolution of Safety Training

High-tech

Learning to Lead

Federal Agencies Promise More of the Same Policies in 2024 Departments push agendas hard in the final year of this presidential term.

The Role of Artificial Intelligence in EHS

As we harness AI’s potential, the future of EHS looks promising—one informed decision at a time.

Safety Best Practices for 2024

Establishing safety as a core value will keep employees safe and avoid complacency in 2024 and beyond.

Why Happiness Matters at Work

How EHS professionals can use the power of happiness to transform workplace safety.

THE MAGAZINE FOR ENVIRONMENT, HEALTH AND SAFETY LEADERS VOLUME 17, NUMBER 1 • SPRING 2024 10 24 14 EHS Tod ay I SPRING 2024 I WWW.EHSTODAY.COM 1 18 22
FEATURES contents
the effectiveness of
tools and an emphasis on individual learning are improving
safety training.
transforming the safety profession.
How formal education and training are
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ITEM: “How to Handle OSHA Inspections: A Webchat Q&A with Compliance Experts,” presented by Micah Dickie of Fisher Phillips and Jeramy Hurt of Ideagen, and moderated by EHS Today’s Dave Blanchard. In this webchat, you’ll learn how to navigate OSHA investigations, from the initial visit and inspection process to addressing walkaround issues, Fourth Amendment concerns, and managing document and interview requests. Learn how to strike the right balance between cooperation and protecting your organization’s rights.

ITEM: “Mastering Workplace Safety Audits: A Step-by-Step Guide,” presented by Cindy Pauley and Tricia Hodkiewicz of J.J. Keller & Associates. In this webcast, you’ll hear practical insights on

conducting workplace safety audits effectively. You’ll learn how to identify and address common workplace safety issues; strategies for enhancing worker and supervisor engagement; and how to develop a comprehensive plan and document the audit process.

ITEM: “The ROI of Visual AI for HSE—Unlocking the Power of Data,” presented by Jodie Sasse and Jonathan Haslanger of SparkCognition. In this webinar, you’ll learn about Visual AI, a safety technology strategy that uses an organization’s existing cameras to analyze video feeds in real-time, identifying everything from a near miss and a man down to a trip hazard or unexpected fire-causing spark. In turn, these insights can be used to measure the effectiveness of new HSE initiatives and programs.

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For more details, go to: www.ehstoday.com/webinars. Healthy Attitude I BY DAVE BLANCHARD 4 Lessons in Leadership I BY ADRIENNE SELKO 6 News Beat 7 New Products 30 Advertiser Index 30 A Work in Progress I BY NICOLE STEMPAK 32 2 WWW.EHSTODAY.COM I SPRING 2024 I EHS Tod ay EHS TODAY (USPS Permit 905-040), ISSN 1945-9599 print, ISSN 2771-7267 online is published 4 times per year (Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter) by Endeavor Business Media, LLC. 201 N. Main St. 5th Floor., Fort Atkinson, WI 53538. Periodicals postage paid at Fort Atkinson, WI, and additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to EHS TODAY, PO Box 3257, Northbrook, IL 60065-3257. SUBSCRIPTIONS: Publisher reserves the right to reject non-qualified subscriptions. Subscription prices: U.S. $86.25 per year; Canada/Mexico $111.25 per year; All other countries $136.25 per year. All subscriptions are payable in U.S. funds. Send subscription inquiries to EHS Today, PO Box 3257, Northbrook, IL 60065-3257. Customer service can be reached toll-free at 877-382-9187 or at ehstoday@omeda.com for magazine subscription assistance or questions. Printed in the USA. Copyright 2024 Endeavor Business Media, LLC. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any
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Power

When End-of-Shift Means End-of-Life

Millions of people worldwide are dying on the job every year, and it’s only getting worse.

The U.S. Government, whatever else you want to say about it, does a pretty good job keeping track of workrelated accidents and fatalities. We know, for instance, that transportation incidents account for more than a third (37.7%) of all occupational fatalities. We also know that year after year after year, the most frequent OSHA violation by U.S. companies is fall protection, and in 2022 the number of workrelated fatalities due to slips, trips and falls increased 1.8%.

And we are also aware of another uncomfortable statistic, provided by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics: A worker died every 96 minutes from a work-related injury in 2022, which is five minutes worse than the average of 101 minutes in 2021. All told, there were 5,486 fatal work injuries in the U.S. in 2022, a 5.7% increase from 5,190 in 2021.

There’s no good news in any of those numbers, other than maybe comparing the lot of U.S. workers with the rest of the world. Every day, on the average, more than 8,000 people worldwide die due to work-related accidents or diseases. That comes to nearly 3 million workers dying every year, either on the job or as a result of some sort of incident at the worksite, according to statistics compiled by the United Nations’ International Labour Organization (ILO). In other words, the number of workers who die every single day throughout the world is more than the number of U.S. workers who die in an entire year.

How is it even remotely possible that in the year 2024, with all the technology and resources and information that’s available on workplace safety, and with companies constantly proclaiming “safety first” slogans, so many people are not going home at the end of their shifts?

A recent report from the ILO—A Call for Safer and Healthier Working Environments—goes into detail about the many causes and conditions that are putting workers at risk throughout the world:

» Nearly 7% (6.71%) of all deaths in the world are workrelated fatalities. The percentage is highest on the African continent (7.39%), followed by Asia/Pacific (7.13%).

» The majority of the work-related fatalities (roughly 75%) occur due to diseases contracted on the job, such as circulatory diseases, malignant tumors and respiratory diseases.

» The number one occupational risk factor contributing to deaths is exposure to long working hours. (Before you scoff

at that point and think, “Hard work never killed anybody,” keep in mind that the ILO’s definition of long working hours equates to more than 55 hours per week.) The number two risk factor is exposure to deadly particulates, gases and fumes.

If you’re looking for the slightest sign of something positive in these numbers, the ILO notes that deaths due to exposure to particulates, gases and fumes have dropped by 20% over the past two decades. However, mesothelioma attributable to asbestos exposure is up by 40%, and lung cancers and other respiratory diseases caused by exposure to chromium has doubled over a comparable period. But however you look at the data, it becomes quite clear that workers are dying on the job in horrific numbers, and these can’t be explained away as tragic-but-unavoidable accidents.

Recognizing that things are just getting worse, in late 2023 the ILO launched an initiative called the Global Strategy on Occupational Safety and Health for 2024-2030. One of the goals of this plan (besides the obvious one of reducing workplace accidents and fatalities) is to promote the use of safety management systems by adopting ILO-OSH 2001 principles, a global standard similar to the ISO 45001 standard. (In the U.S., OSHA is likewise encouraging SMS adoption and use.)

The goals of these efforts are quite lofty, and it’s unclear as to how exactly the 187 member states (i.e., countries) of the ILO will cooperate in establishing a common global benchmark for workplace safety. Cultural and geopolitical differences aside, getting nearly 200 countries to agree on anything, let alone how to protect workers in every type of work situation imaginable, is going to take some doing. But acknowledging the problem is at least indicative of a desire to do something about it.

The reality is, technology alone isn’t going to be a gamechanger. Safety management systems, AI-based predictive software, virtual reality training devices, wearable health monitors, smart sensors, warehouse robots, exoskeletons—the list of high-tech safety solutions is long and impressive, but they’re not the be-all and end-all of safety. The real gamechanger is the insistence that every workplace fosters a culture of safety. No ifs, ands or buts about it.

HEALTHY ATTITUDE
4 WWW.EHSTODAY.COM I SPRING 2024 I EHS Tod ay Send an e-mail with your thoughts to dblanchard@endeavorb2b.com.

Good Safety Cultures Can Attract and Retain Talent

Workers need to know that their companies value their safety above all else.

By now most hiring managers are used to hearing job candidates ask about their companies’ environmental record or even their DE&I policies. Fielding questions about a company’s safety record isn’t quite as common, and yet job candidates and current employees are very focused on safety.

While this interest in workplace safety might have intensified with the pandemic, it has since expanded to a variety of forms of safety, both physical and psychological.

“Employees everywhere have experienced multiple crises over the past few years that have altered their view of the world and their perceptions of safety outside of the comfort of their homes,” said Christopher Kenessey, CEO at AlertMedia, when announcing his company’s report, The State of Employee Safety, in 2023. “These events impact how employees show up to work daily, and we’re seeing a growing desire among workers for employers to implement a more integrated and hands-on approach to ensuring their safety, regardless of whether they’re working in the office, from home, in the field or while traveling for business.”

According to the report, 75% of employees say their employer’s safety efforts have not been very effective. And the reason for that is that 71% of employees feel their employers are not following through on safety promises. They are also concerned about emergency situations, since 83% have experienced an emergency at work at some point in their careers. A similar number of employees (84%) believe that their employers can do more to make them feel prepared to face emergencies at work.

In addition to physical safety, employees and potential hires are concerned about psychological safety. The survey found that 66% of employees say their employer is not making an active effort to support their mental health. In fact, 62% note that their organization does not provide resources for mental health, and 67% say their workplace culture does not allow for open dialogue about mental health.

Creating a psychologically safe culture is something that Schneider Electric, a global provider of energy management and automation, has been working on for the past five years,

well ahead of the curve of many companies. “Our approach to on-the-job safety includes working with both managers and employees to understand the human aspect of why injuries occur,” explains Tom Pitts, Schneider Electric’s director of safety and environment for Services and Solutions Group in North America. “We talk about concerns such as fatigue and complacency, and figure out ways to address these issues.”

Showing that you care about employees is something that Rick Tobin, CEO of SafetyNow, a company that offers training videos, is seeing as well. “The younger workforce—Gen Z and millennials—are looking to work for companies that demonstrate they care about employees through their investments in health and wellness programs.” Tobin says these investments have a concrete return through increased job satisfaction and productivity. “Employees have a sense of being at ease. They are not afraid of getting into an accident at work, so they don’t have to spend their mental energy on that and can focus on how to improve workflow and make their jobs better.”

Pitts echoes that opinion. “We have found that younger workers are concerned with safety. The fact we have a very low EMR [Experience Modification Rating] has helped us to attract talent.” But that’s only part of the equation. Retaining employees once they’re onboard is equally challenging. “Offering a variety of safety courses, which can be taken in any form, at any time, and personalized for the job creates a consistent safety culture. And we have a policy that any employee has the ability to stop work if they feel it’s unsafe.”

Schneider’s safety culture resonates with both current and future employees. When Pitts was asked if Schneider, like nearly every other company, was having trouble finding employees, he had a very simple answer: “No. People want to work for us.”

Send

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LESSONS IN LEADERSHIP Adrienne Selko
an e-mail with your thoughts to aselko@endeavorb2b.com.

NEWS BEAT

Sustainability Concerns are Impacting PPE Purchasing Decisions

New study from ISEA, ASSP and EHS Today examines the growing popularity of sustainable safety products.

Eighty percent of safety managers believe that sustainability is an important purchase criterion when it comes to choosing PPE, according to a recent study conducted by the International Safety Equipment Association (ISEA), the American Society of Safety Professionals (ASSP) and EHS Today. And the PPE suppliers are paying attention to that trend, as almost all (96%) of the safety equipment and PPE suppliers surveyed said they already have several sustainable business practices in place. What’s more, 44% have formal, company-wide sustainability programs.

The study, “Protecting Workers and Planet: Sustainability in the PPE and Safety Equipment Industry,” examines how safety equipment suppliers are increasingly offering products that not only protect workers but also support companies’ corporate sustainability goals. Both EHS

professionals and safety product suppliers participated in con dential surveys about current practices and needs, as well as expectations for the future.

“Over the last several years, the growth of sustainable products has skyrocketed, especially in the consumer

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*Share of respondents selecting “very important” or “somewhat important”

world,” says Cam Mackey, ISEA’s president and CEO. “And, while most businesses are still developing their own approach towards sustainable purchasing, now is the time for providers of PPE and safety equipment to prepare for a future where a certain degree of sustainability practices will likely be table stakes.”

“[N]ow is the time for providers of PPE and safety equipment to prepare for a future where...sustainability practices will likely be table stakes.”

“[EHS] professionals are well positioned to influence change within their organizations to promote better sustainability practices,” adds Jim Thornton, president of ASSP. “Increased worker expectations in this area are prompting companies to invest in the future and to invest in people as part of the triple bottom line—people, planet and prosperity.”

According to the survey, 70% of safety professionals believe it’s important for PPE suppliers to calculate the

sustainability benefits of their products, making it easier to factor sustainability into the purchase decision. That doesn’t necessarily mean users are likely to pay considerably more for sustainable PPE, but the survey indicates they’re twice as likely to pay a “sustainability premium” for suppliers who quantify sustainability benefits.

Safety professionals also emphasized that sustainability, while increasingly important, does not supersede the need to protect workers from harm. As Mackey points out, “Since several end-users voiced concerns about taking focus away from PPE’s core purpose of protection, suppliers should provide proof points that their sustainable products are able to perform and protect equally or more effectively than their traditional ones.”

The sustainability attributes most important to safety professionals are:

» Improved product longevity/durability (important to 96% of respondents)

» Streamlined/reduced packaging (87%)

» Packaging with recycled/recyclable materials (86%) (see chart on p. 7)

Given that safety professionals are typically among their companies’ most vocal supporters of sustainability initiatives, investing in sustainable practices could prove to be a winning strategy for PPE suppliers going forward.

NEWS BEAT
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Employees Prioritize DE&I

Employees who feel their workplace is not inclusive are twice as likely to leave.

Employees are walking their talk. A recent report, State of Work, from HRBrain.ai, surveyed 2,000 employees and explored diversity, equity, inclusion (DE&I) and pay equity.

One of the most important findings of the survey was that employees who perceive their workplace policies as not inclusive are twice as likely to be actively looking for new employment opportunities.

Only 42% of those surveyed felt their company effectively implemented DE&I policies.

A more nuanced finding was examining internal communications using a DE&I lens. In that case just 42% feel their companies’ internal communications are unbiased and inclusive.

On the inclusion side of the equation, 58% report not feeling their voices are heard within the workplace.

These views translate directly to how employees choose companies, as the survey found that 51% of the workforce weighs a company’s commitment to DE&I heavily in their job acceptance decisions.

On the other side of the coin, if workers aren’t content with company policies, they begin to look elsewhere, as 30% of those surveyed were doing.

The report offers these implications of the survey:

» The need for improved leadership and management training is evident, with implications for employee engagement and company cohesion.

» A proactive approach to fostering positive workplace culture can significantly enhance employee well-being and productivity.

» Understanding and addressing employee needs can bridge gaps in employer-employee dynamics, enhancing organizational empathy.

» Emphasizing diversity and inclusion not only benefits company culture but also aids in attracting and retaining diverse talent.

“The insights from our comprehensive study serve as a clarion call for HR leaders and executives across the United States,” said Tim Glowa, CEO and founder of HRbrain. ai, in a statement. “The path forward involves a committed, actionable approach to DE&I that transcends mere policy to affect real change within the organizational culture.”

—EHS Today staff

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The Continuing Evolution of Safety Training

High-tech tools and an emphasis on individual learning are improving the effectiveness of safety training.

Imagine this scene. Walking into that day’s safety meeting everyone is handed an augmented reality headset. Once the device is activated, each person virtually experiences the exact same incident that had occurred earlier at the plant. Each worker is able to run through various options and scenarios that play out how the incident could have been avoided.

That is the endgame for Thomas Pitts, Schneider Electric’s director of safety and environment for Services and Solutions Group in North America. “People learn more when training is hands-on,” Pitts says. “This [augmented reality] method allows people to understand specifically what happened in an incident and what could have been done differently.”

Pitts has set Schneider Electric, a global provider of energy management and automation, on course for this dream to become reality. “What has changed over the past few years, in terms of technology, is that people are able to be trained on a variety of devices, such as computers, tablets and smartphones. They can train however and whenever they want—even on their own time, if they would like.”

While it might seem odd for people to train on their own, it’s exactly what employees at the company are doing. Safety surveys, conducted annually, have shown over the past three years that safety training is what employees are most interested in. “People can create learning methods that work best for them,” says Pitts. “They can choose the pace, take breaks and review material again.”

This move toward individualized training is part of an overall company strategy. “Since COVID, there are two words that describe our training strategy: tailored and efficient,” explains Pitts.

The amount and type of training depends on an individual’s role. To offer a wide array of training, the company partnered with Underwriters Laboratory (UL) to offer employees the entire training catalog. “We can now tailor training specifically on job codes,” says Pitts. For

example, driver safety is one of their top five safety concerns. Therefore, a large investment has been made to provide continuous training, including microlearning. “We can assign different learning, once a month, to make sure information is always fresh in people’s minds.”

EMPHASIZING THE INDIVIDUAL

This emphasis on the individual is something that Rick Tobin, CEO of SafetyNow, a provider of safety training courses, is seeing in the market as well. “The onus has moved to the individual, and we are seeing this across the board as part of an overall business transition,” says Tobin. “For a long time, behavior-based training was the preferred method, but now it’s more focused on individual safety and accountability. However, in order for training to be effective, it has to be measured. If you are placing accountability on the individual, how are you measuring that individual’s contribution?”

Measuring, using data analytics, is how Schneider decides what training is necessary. “Whenever we do have an incident, or any near misses, we look at trend analysis,” explains Pitts. “For example, since many employees work with metal, cuts and burns occur, so we tackle those hazards in real time, instead of waiting for safety reports to tell us why this happens. We can use artificial intelligence (AI) to provide this data.”

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The company doesn’t use traditional metrics either. “We don’t look at lagging metrics; instead, we look at proactive activities,” says Pitts. In fact, proactivity is included in safety performance metrics for managers. “Safety activities and actions are part of their performance review. How many safety activities they conduct, including audits, walking the plants, behavior-based training or talking to employees one-on-one are measured.”

And measurement is solidified by yearly reports, third-party audits as well as audits at each site.

Due to the nature of the products Schneider makes, safety extends in both directions. “We want the equipment that we make to be as safe as possible for our customers,” Pitts says, “and the same goes for our people who are building, installing and servicing equipment. We want to make sure they are safe when they are doing those tasks.”These efforts have paid off as Schneider is one of a small number of companies that have won both the Robert Campbell Award and the Green Cross Award issued by the National Safety Council.

REMOTE TRAINING

A large part of tailoring learning is being able to use technology to offer remote training. Schneider has partnered with third parties to conduct live remote training. Of course,

anything done remotely can offer challenges, and Pitts has found that to avoid distractions and encourage engagement, cameras are turned on during training and microphones are open so that conversations are two-way, and more questions can be answered during the training.

This expanded delivery of training has impacted how companies are able to offer a variety of courses, says Tobin. “When companies were required to do cross-company training, mostly for the top 10 OSHA issues, it was costly. But once the pandemic hit and people went to remote training, it became a different landscape. Once they adopted this efficient method for training, many then applied that to a variety of training, including soft skills.”

Especially with constant regulatory changes, remote training offers an efficient delivery method. “If companies need to meet certain requirements in some states, it’s just as easy to roll out that training across the entire country,” notes Tobin.

Determining the effectiveness of this training is essential. In a recent survey conducted by SafetyNow on the state of the training market, for the first time there was a significant response from safety leaders looking at AI. “Using AI to assist in metrics is valuable in that you can tie the safety metrics to overall business metrics. And as adoption of AI expands, I think companies will see safety training as part of overall corporate efficiency and productivity initiatives, and realize the investment provides a return,” Tobin says.

CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT

At Schneider, to ensure that their training is top notch, at the end of each training module, employees are asked to rate the trainer and to offer suggestions for improvement. “You miss a lot when you just certify that the information was understood, but don’t go further,” Pitts points out. “We need to make sure that the training is good. And we need to know which topics people are interested in.”

This feedback could be the reason that four years ago the company started offering training in psychological safety, a topic that most companies are just now beginning to explore. Every year Schneider conducts safety culture surveys, looking for gaps, and then they introduce courses to fill those gaps. On the subject of psychological safety, Schneider is focused on training both managers and employees to widen their perspective when it comes to what causes incidents. “We try to help our managers and employees understand the human factors that could explain why incidents occur, and help them learn what they can do to combat different factors, such as fatigue or complacency,” says Pitts.

As safety training evolves and continues to focus on both the human aspect as well as individual accountability, it will be technology, once thought to be highly impersonal, that will in fact make the personal aspect of safety improve. EHS

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AI GENERATED_ADOBE FIREFLY

Learning to Lead

How formal education and training are transforming the safety profession.

Michael Holland remembers his interactions with the safety director at his former employer, a commercial construction company.

“He just basically audited us, sent pictures to the boss and got us in trouble,” Holland says. “He was so focused on avoiding a citation process that he didn’t really make safety relatable.”

This continued for a few years until Holland’s boss approached him with a question: The safety director is leaving. Would he like to move into that role?

“I’m like, wow, so you’re asking the guy who hated the safety professional to become a safety professional,” Holland recalls.

We asked how respondents got started in safety:

But he was intrigued. Holland asked his boss what he would need to make the transition from superintendent to safety. His boss said to figure it out, and he would pay for whatever was needed. That’s how, after some research, Holland decided to go to college at the age of 52. Now, he’s expected to graduate with his master’s this summer and is a CSP and an area safety leader at Clark Construction Company.

Holland’s not alone. Safety is a second career for many people, and they find their way to safety from several different avenues.

Those varied backgrounds and experiences offer great advantages for the safety profession, but they can also pose challenges when it comes to ensuring everyone has adequate training and the knowledge they need to be effective safety leaders at their organizations.

Add to that the fact that safety professionals are not required to obtain any kind of licensure or training, and that creates a vast landscape for professionals and employers alike to navigate.

THE SAFETY LANDSCAPE

EHS Today sought to know more about people’s experiences with safety training, formal education and leadership, so we conducted a survey. Answers vary, but some themes and values do emerge.

» 34% said they moved into safety after working at a plant, jobsite or shop floor;

» 22% studied occupational health and safety, industrial hygiene or a similar program in college;

» 17% left another unrelated field to work in safety;

» 4% entered safety after their military service; and

» 23% chose other.

Of those who chose “other,” one respondent said they were one day asked by the CEO to develop a safety plan while another said they got into safety after a worksite fatality.

A majority of respondents (70%) earned at least a bachelor’s degree from college, but they’re divided on advanced certifications in safety; 44% hold them, 49% don’t and the remaining 7% had certifications but let theirs expire.

However, a majority (84%) agree that having formal training and/or education has helped them in their safety career. What’s more, 65% said that formal training and/or education is necessary to be an effective leader.

When it comes to education and training, respondents were divided on what has been the most helpful to them on their safety journey:

» Specific safety training, such as through a safety association – 40%

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» On-the-job training, such as from colleagues or microlearning – 22%

» OSHA training – 16%

» Formal degree program, such as a university – 15%

» Periodic training from your employer – 6%.

One respondent commented that formal training was helpful because “it allowed me to make connections to people that have helped build my knowledge. I think that is the most crucial thing in the safety industry. There is too much out there to know it all. The contacts you make during your formal training become the people you reach out to when you have questions and vice versa.”

Another respondent said that while they don’t think a bachelor’s degree is necessary, they do believe that some formal training, either through OSHA or a safety organization, is essential when presenting to management. “Your challenge is to learn the language of the C-suite and be able to translate our information into something meaningful that can help drive change.”

Those are some of the main reasons people join the American Society of Safety Professionals (ASSP), says Pam Walaski, CSP, FASSP and president-elect of ASSP.

“Our members enter the profession from lots of different paths,” says Walaski, who has been an ASSP trainer for many years.

THE ROLE OF FORMAL EDUCATION

Walaski says she joined ASSP after graduating with her second bachelor’s degree in environmental protection science. She was working for a consulting company that asked her to take care of the safety program. She knew nothing about safety, but her supervisors thought she could learn fast.

A survey of ASSP’s 35,000 global membership found that 61% of members have a reported certification or credential and that professional development and education is a top reason why people join the association.

“I think [our diversity] is a benefit in some ways because it [makes safety] open to a lot of different people, but it’s a challenge that the profession faces,” she says. “Who are we and how do we define ourselves?

“Somebody who maybe is trained as an HR professional may suddenly find themselves responsible for safety in their organization. You wouldn’t see that in other, more clearly defined professions like medicine. You wouldn’t see someone who is not a doctor examining patients in a clinic. But I could call myself a safety professional without having a degree or any experience, and there are a number of folks who find that to be very troubling.”

Walaski teaches undergraduate and graduate students as adjunct instructor at four different universities, and the degree programs are all called something different. There isn’t one degree or field of study for safety, and programs can be housed in different departments at a university, which will influence the curriculum. For example, some safety programs are part of a College of Public Health while others might be in the College of Engineering.

Sammy Davis, CSP, GrIOSH, vice president of safety and security for Papa John’s International, earned his bachelor’s

and master’s degrees in safety. In December 2023, he earned his doctorate in organizational leadership. Davis says his formal education taught him technical skills, but it also taught him how to think through his decisions.

“The formal education piece may teach you the fundamentals, but you have to learn that safety is not always a black and white transaction. There’s a lot of grey areas, and if you don’t have that formal education, you’ll make poor decisions—and those poor decisions are typically what get companies in trouble.”

Davis is also an adjunct instructor, and he says he likes sharing what he’s learned in his 35 years as a safety professional, especially the business aspect. It’s not essential to know what a profit and loss statement is as an entry-level safety professional, but he says it becomes important if someone wants to move into a managerial role.

“Safety has gotten so complex that you need that true professional who’s got not only the experience but has the education as well to know where to start,” he says.

THE BENEFITS OF CREDENTIALS

Katherine Mendoza, senior director of workplace programs at the National Safety Council (NSC) and EHS director, says that safety professionals are sometimes required by their organization or employer to complete a curriculum and testing program as well as maintain any continuing education requirements.

“Having a credentialing process within the profession has had an overwhelmingly positive impact on the field and the credibility of individuals in safety positions,” Mendoza says. “It sets a standard for knowledge and ensures you have the right people with the right competencies in the right positions.”

Holland says credentials can also be important for clients because they want to control risk at the jobsite. He has worked in sophisticated environments for the likes of Amazon, Google and Gilead Sciences. He says clients like those want to see that the area safety director has a CSP.

“I think there’s a comfort level because they have relied on education [themselves in their careers],” he says. “You may not be motivated to get a CSP, but it also makes you less hirable if a client requires your company to have a CSP there.”

Davis says that everyone on his team at Papa John’s either has a credential or is working on a credential, such as CSP. He tells his team that credentials are an important signal that someone is focused on their own development and that they have mastered those skills.

He knows firsthand how credentials can lead to new opportunities, too. Davis says that recruiters and human resources will often scour directories to find qualified job candidates, especially for upper-management positions. Ten years ago, he got a call from a recruiter, and that’s what ultimately led him to his current role.

“That’s why I’m at Papa John’s,” he says. EHS

EHS Education offers continuing education courses for safety professionals: www.ehseducation.com.

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Federal Agencies Promise More of the Same Policies in 2024

Departments push agendas hard in the final year of this presidential term.

Before the end of last year, federal agencies were required by law to publish their regulatory and policy agendas for 2024. Those agendas reinforce the fact that they will continue pursuing much the same course they have since President Joe Biden took office.

A common thread woven through all of the federal agencies’ agendas is their commitment to the promotion of unionization of the nation’s workforce, which includes the various agencies and commissions working together to advance that cause.

When it comes to the prospects for the Department of Labor’s agenda for 2024, don’t expect to see any slackening of its efforts in that regard, although the DOL currently lacks a formally approved cabinet-level chief. Biden’s nominee for Secretary of Labor, Julie Su, continues to serve as Acting Secretary because she could not overcome public controversy to garner enough Democratic votes in the Senate to be formally confirmed.

Biden suffered a similar—although lower-level—setback earlier when he could not get David Weil, a former President Barack Obama official, confirmed to head the DOL’s Wage and Hour Division (WHD).

DOL has stated its goals for 2024 plainly: “To create and sustain good jobs, the department has focused rulemaking on worker health and safety, fair wages, and supporting unions and workers who are organizing unions.” DOL also says it is advancing equity and supporting marginalized communities by creating rules that protect workers who are so defined from discrimination.

The WHD intends to issue a final rule in April regarding overtime pay rules. This includes updates to the executive, administrative and professional exemption for the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), also called the White Collar exemption. This includes tinkering with the definitions of supervisory activities to further limit the number of staff exempt from minimum wage laws.

This includes updating the overtime minimum salary threshold from $684 per week ($35,568 annually for a fullyear worker) to $1,059 per week ($55,068 annually for a full-year worker). DOL intends to raise the salary threshold for highly compensated employees from $107,432 annually to $143,988 annually.

The changes include automatic increases to all minimum wage salary thresholds that will be adopted every three years as part of an effort to maintain wage levels DOL says are needed to “ensure that middle-class jobs pay middle-class wages, extending important overtime pay protections to millions of workers and raising their pay.”

As part of the administrationwide pro-unionization campaign, DOL pledged to work closely with other federal agencies to deal with the controversial joint employer issue. DOL can also be expected to support the National Labor Relations Board’s (NLRB) recent actions. The joint employer issue is important to unions seeking to organize franchise operations, such as McDonald’s restaurants.

WHD also plans to finalize regulations to clarify the distinctions between employees and independent contractors under the FLSA. This remains a top issue for unions. Weil, Obama’s WHD chief, once declared that there are no such things as independent contractors, only misclassified employees, something Hillary Clinton repeated when she ran for president.

Last October, DOL proposed revisions to its own independent contractor standards, and it issued the final rule in January. The rule has created public consternation among some members of the business community, including the American Trucking Associations. But the rule’s ultimate impact on independent contractor status in various industries depends largely on how DOL will choose to enforce it.

Other actions slated to take place in 2024 include further revisions and updates to department policies and regulations dealing with multi-employer and singleemployer pension funds. Some are now in the pre-final rule stage and are focused on:

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» improving participant engagement and effectiveness of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA) retirement plan disclosures;

» pooled employer plans management;

» emergency savings supervision of individual account plans; and

» plan reporting for retirement savings lost and found.

DOL’s Employment and Training Administration (ETA) has proposed regulations to ensure that H-2B visa programs promote worker protections for these immigrants. This will be part of implementation of the White House’s H-2B Worker Protection Taskforce goals, which were announced Oct. 19. Also involved are the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the State Department and the Agency for International Development.

In November, DOL announced its support for a DHS plan to increase the number of H-2B non-immigrant visas issued up to 64,716 for the entirety of Fiscal Year 2024, including up to 20,000 reserved for citizens of Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Haiti, Colombia, Ecuador and Costa Rica.

OSHA ENTERS THE FRAY

In addition, DOL announced its commitment to improve

working conditions for H-2B workers further by taking steps to protect their safety through actions that will be undertaken by perhaps its best-known division—the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA).

OSHA will propose a new infectious diseases rulemaking to protect employees in healthcare and other high-risk environments from exposure to and transmission of persistent and new infectious diseases. These are said to range from ancient scourges, such as tuberculosis, to newer threats such as Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) and COVID-19.

In January 2024, OSHA proposed updates to an existing standard and expanded safety and health protections for emergency responders, including firefighters, emergency medical service providers and technical search and rescue workers. The changes will apply to the standard originally adopted in 1980.

Currently, OSHA regulations protecting emergency responders’ safety and health is a patchwork of decades-old, hazard-specific standards, the agency explained. “Not designed as comprehensive emergency response standards, they fail to address the full range of job hazards faced by today’s emergency responders,” OSHA said.

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The newly named “Emergency Response” standard updates safety and health protections and will be in line with national consensus standards for a broad range of workers exposed to hazards that arise during and after fires and other emergencies. It will include major changes for protective clothing and equipment and significant improvements in safety and health practices that the industry generally accepts as standard procedures, OSHA said.

OSHA is also in the process of completing small business consultations required by law as part of the next step in finalizing a rulemaking on heat illness prevention. (As part of the Administrative Procedures Act of 1946, Congress required federal agencies to conduct a small business impact study before issuing a final rule, along with environmental impact studies in some cases.)

In the pre-rule stage of development are new rules intended to deal with process safety management, the prevention of major chemical accidents and an update to the agency’s mechanical power presses standards. Other proceedings in development will address the prevention of workplace violence in health care and social assistance, and the establishment of a blood lead level for medical removal.

Also awaiting issuance of a final rule are amendments to the cranes and derricks in the construction standard and changes to requirements regarding communication tower safety, emergency response; a Lock-Out/Tag-Out update; welding in construction confined spaces; and revisions to the agency’s tree care standard.

Other changes awaiting finalization include:

» walking-working surfaces;

» personal protective equipment in construction;

» a powered industrial trucks design standard update;

» changes to the worker walkaround representative designation process to allow employees to designate outsiders, such as union representatives, in non-union worksite;

» reduction of occupational exposure to crystalline silica; and

» revisions to medical surveillance provisions for medical removal protection.

You can expect OSHA’s enforcement staff to remain busy as well, especially when it comes to targeting employers in industry segments under pressure to unionize. It’s no secret that OSHA has been cracking down on Amazon and Starbucks, two prominent companies that are confronting drawn-out union organizing campaigns. In 2023, OSHA upped the ante for the union-targeted Amazon by leveling charges against its distribution facilities about the company’s medical response to workplace injuries. Unable to show the company’s facilities were not responding when a worker was injured, the agency now alleges those medical responses are inadequate in detail, degree or amount.

Last summer, OSHA launched a three-year National Emphasis Program (NEP) permitting extensive inspections of warehousing and distribution center operations, mail/postal processing and distribution centers, parcel delivery/courier services, and certain retail establishments designated as being “high-hazard.” OSHA said it is looking for hazards related to

powered industrial vehicle operations, material handling and storage, walking and working surfaces, means of egress, and fire protection. (Another NEP announced last May targeted slips and falls in the construction industry.)

In recent years, the agency has initiated other NEPs and Regional Emphasis Programs (REPs) as well. Although it may not happen in an election year, don’t be surprised if OSHA announces similar efforts in 2024.

In October, the agency signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) agreement with the NLRB promising to work together to promote union growth. Under the agreement, OSHA will provide what it perceives as potential victims of alleged unfair labor practices with the NLRB’s contact information and how to obtain information about their rights under federal labor law. OSHA also will advise employees who may want to file time-barred official complaints that they can still file an unfair labor charge with the NLRB for an additional six months.

For its part, the NLRB will share information with OSHA regarding workers it believes are currently or likely exposed to health or safety hazards or have been subjected to suspected violations of OSHA regulations, as well as encouraging those workers to contact OSHA promptly.

Further, the MOU provides opportunities for the NLRB and OSHA to conduct coordinated investigations and inspections “in appropriate cases and to the extent allowable under law.” In cases where there are overlapping statutory violations at issue, the agencies agree to “explore and confer” regarding what enforcement actions are appropriate for each agency to undertake.

EEOC EMBRACES DEI

The Equal Opportunity Employment Commission (EEOC) has reached an unusual point in its decades-long history: The success of its core mission in improving the consciousness of employers regarding racial, ethnic and gender discrimination has now reached a place where it has been adopted as a management practice throughout corporate America.

Employers’ willingness to embrace diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies throughout the country (and indeed internationally as well) shows that the concept and the principles driving it have achieved widespread acceptance. However, the commission has kept busy by pursuing its agenda.

According to its Strategic Enforcement Plan for fiscal years 2024-28, which was released Dec. 6, the EEOC will continue to hew to this same path. The commission has been out of the headlines in recent years, but that was because prior to last July’s confirmation of Democrat Kalpana Kotagal as a member, the commissioners had been deadlocked, divided evenly between two Republicans and two Democrats.

The current EEOC action with the biggest direct impact on almost all employers is the requirement that they file the EEO-1 Component Form with the commission. That process began when the commission opened its website to receive those filings from employers, which were due by Dec. 5 and no later than Jan. 9.

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In the EEO-1 Component Form, employers are expected to supply the commission with detailed pay data organized by multiple pay levels and job description categories for women, racial and ethnic minorities, and disabled employees. It is possible that the EEOC will extend the deadline if it does not receive enough responses—something that it has done in the past.

This controversial reporting requirement was originally imposed during the Obama administration, underwent court challenges, was withdrawn during the Trump administration and then re-imposed after Biden took of ce.

American life—transgenderism. Among the issues tackled in it are gender identity epithets, use of a name or pronoun inconsistent with someone’s gender identity (misgendering), harassment because an individual does not act in a manner associated with their gender, and denying access to facilities due to gender identity.

Although the EEOC has asserted that the information collected from employers will only be used for research and in development of generalized policy positions, employers expressed concern that it could be used to target individual companies for future enforcement actions and eventually will be made publicly available on the Internet.

Late last year, the commission also opened a proceeding to gather public comments on a proposed guidance for employers dealing with issues arising from one of the most controversial topics in contemporary

The guidance also seeks input from the public on how far employers should go in monitoring social media in an effort to ensure employees are not engaging in discrimination and sexual harassment on the employer’s physical premises.

In addition, employers should ready themselves to deal with EEOC’s increased attention to complaints arising from charges of discrimination on the basis of religion, an issue the commission intends to focus on more. Sentiments stirred up by recent wars, con icts and other geopolitical events may also be re ected in the mix of complaints the EEOC receives. EHS

David Sparkman is founding editor of ACWI Advance and contributing editor to EHS Today.

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The Role of Artificial Intelligence in EHS

As we harness AI’s potential, the future of EHS looks promising— one informed decision at a time.

At its core, safety is an information-based discipline. This information can take many forms; it could be leading and lagging safety performance indicators, emissions numbers, risks noted over multiple observations at the shop floor, audit logs and so forth. Today’s unfortunate reality is that environment, health and safety (EHS) leaders often spend more time worrying about the cleanliness, completeness and comprehensiveness of that information than they do thinking about how to strategically leverage the insights embedded within it.

Fortunately, artificial intelligence (AI) is changing the narrative. Stressed that your employees aren’t adequately documenting near misses or observations? AI can help. Struggling to stay up to date on the latest regulatory developments and ensure 100% compliance? AI can help. Straining to identify relationships within EHS datasets that will unlock performance gains? You guessed it—AI is here to help.

Broadly speaking, AI is allowing EHS professionals to spend more time doing what they got into this business to do: tactically implement programs, processes and procedures that help every worker get home safe every day. Let’s explore some of these use cases in detail.

SEE EVERYTHING THAT’S HAPPENING

EHS professionals can’t be everywhere at once. Walking the floor is often in the daily routine, but even then there will be safety issues that will only be documented if a frontline employee takes it upon themselves to report it. With AI, closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras can be trained to automatically watch for, detect, and report near misses and policy nonconformances. This can include speeding vehicles, employees incorrectly wearing personal protective equipment (PPE) and incursions into exclusion zones.

The beauty of AI for this use case is that EHS leaders can train it to see whatever they want to look for. Safety leaders can be virtually omnipresent in a way that wasn’t previously possible.

FINDING VALUE IN LARGE DATASETS

Organizations with tens or hundreds of thousands of employees generate a lot of safety data: observations, incident reports, audit findings, inspection logs, and the list goes on.

Filtering through the noise is difficult, but AI can browse these datasets in a fraction of the time it would take a human.

One thousand incident reports in different languages, formats or styles can be sorted into 10 high-level categories with a click of a button. Countless unstructured observation descriptions can be boiled down to a few key themes in seconds. AI presents major opportunities for time savings and efficiency gains.

PREDICTIVE AND PRESCRIPTIVE ANALYTICS

Since AI is well-versed in looking at data, it’s great at finding meaningful relationships or correlations. That means if the circumstances that previously led to a negative outcome (i.e., compliance violations or serious injuries and fatalities) reoccur, AI can automatically flag it. AI can then let the EHS leader act themselves or recommend an action that might help reduce current risk levels.

For example, if there was a serious hand injury, AI could automatically suggest refresher courses on machine guarding and PPE to every user affiliated with a task where a job safety analysis includes risk of laceration. This idea isn’t novel in EHS, nor are the solutions for it; however, the innovation is in how AI makes EHS management more accessible to many more organizations.

STAY ON TOP OF REGULATIONS

Ensuring compliance with evolving regulations is a complex task for organizations. Machine learning algorithms continuously analyze regulatory updates from every conceivable source to ensure that EHS management systems are always up to date. AI can take it a step further and automate the generation of compliance reports, further reducing the administrative burden on organizations and minimizing oversights.

IMPROVE TRAINING AND DRIVE ENGAGEMENT

Mature EHS programs are built on countless documents, policies and procedures. You want employees to know them like the

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back of their hand, but they have jobs to do and might interact with them sparingly. What if AI could take key documents and automatically create micro lessons to help employees?

Well, it can! Instead of an EHS leader spending weeks or months producing training programs, AI can do it in minutes. The now unburdened EHS manager can use that time to talk with frontline employees and build relationships.

CHALLENGES WITH AI

Despite the evident advantages of AI, many organizations remain skeptical about its capacity to comprehend, interpret and organize critical information that drives performance and ensures compliance. A significant portion of EHS information is highly sensitive for a variety of reasons, so trepidation about data privacy, security and general effectiveness is commonplace.

Equally critical is addressing concerns about bias and equity. AI models are built by people, and people have their own thought processes and ways of doing things. If not accounted for, AI models become a reflection of the person or people that built them—biases, blind spots and all. Proactive efforts are essential to identify and mitigate biases in AI models, ensuring outcomes that achieve the goal of improving performance to the maximum extent possible.

Navigating regulatory compliance poses another challenge in the application of AI in EHS. Are you ready to put your compliance program in the hands of a faceless, nameless, liability-free stack of code? What if it misses something and your organization must pay thousands or millions to correct the error?

There are plenty of issues to watch out for, but a proactive strategy for utilizing AI in EHS can help your organization harness its power with limited downsides. When implementing AI tools, be sure to do the following:

» Regularly monitor outputs and results. AI models need to be “taught,” so check their work just like you would that of a student.

» Clarify who has final say. If AI suggests one thing and an organizational leader suggests another, which suggestion wins? Avoid conflict down the line by clearly articulating roles and responsibilities up front.

» Assess liability. Especially important in regulatory use cases, be sure to review limitations and legal responsibility before leaning on a virtual tool for realworld compliance.

» Determine which AI use cases will give you the best ROI. AI can do a lot, but that doesn’t mean your organization needs all that functionality. What problems do you need help with? What AI application will make an immediate impact? Address those first.

» Understand the tools you choose to use. Not all AI tools are created equal. They’ll have different underlying methodologies, different security profiles and different performance parameters, to name a few. When implementing an AI tool, especially for a new use case, do your homework so you know what you’re getting and how it works.

» Talk to your IT team. This one goes without saying, but bring in the most technologically-literate people to conversations about emerging technology.

The integration of AI in EHS applications is reshaping the landscape of workplace safety. AI-driven EHS solutions will empower organizations to be more proactive by enabling better risk mitigation, real-time monitoring and streamlined compliance processes. AI will be less of a tool and more of a partner in the never-ending quest for zero harm.

The possibilities of AI are only now coming into full view. As we harness AI’s potential, the future of EHS looks promising—one informed decision at a time. EHS

Trevor Bronson is director of portfolio strategy with Intelex, a provider of SaaS-based environmental, health, safety and quality (EHSQ) management software.

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Driving Positive Workplace Safety Outcomes: Overcoming Challenges with Effective Incident Investigations

Workplace safety remains paramount for industries worldwide, with incidents, injuries, and diseases posing significant worker risks.

Despite ongoing efforts to mitigate these risks, recent statistics underscore the urgent need for organizations to prioritize health and safety measures.

According to the most current data from the International Labour Organization, approximately 2.78 million fatalities occur annually due to work-related accidents or diseases, translating to over 7,600 deaths every day globally.

Additionally, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported a concerning rise in workplace fatalities in 2023, an increase of 12% over the previous year. These alarming figures highlight the persistent challenges in ensuring workplace safety and the pressing need for proactive measures to address them.

Despite technological advancements and increased awareness of safety protocols, organizations continue to face challenges in improving safety outcomes. Cultural biases and misconceptions surrounding incident reporting and investigation remain prevalent, hindering progress in creating safer work environments.

Recency bias, a common phenomenon in incident reporting, contributes to underreporting and a culture of fear among employees. Additionally, the tendency to attribute incidents solely to employee error overlooks systemic deficiencies in workplace environments. Organizations must shift from faultfinding to a systems-based approach, considering broader factors contributing to incidents beyond individual actions.

Amidst these challenges, leveraging supply risk management tools can offer significant advantages in tracking and monitoring contractors, suppliers, subcontractors, workers and temporary workers. A centralized platform is essential for managing supply chain compliance, streamlining prequalification processes, and monitoring safety performance.

Effective incident investigations are crucial in fostering a safety culture and driving organizational learning. The CSA Z1005 Incident Investigation standard provides a comprehensive framework for conducting thorough investigations tailored to organizational needs. Companies can identify root causes, implement corrective actions, and prevent future incidents by adopting this standard.

Furthermore, incident investigations offer a significant return on investment by averting costly disruptions to operations and preserving the company’s reputation. Organizations can safeguard employees and business interests by prioritizing safety and investing in robust investigation processes.

In conclusion, prioritizing workplace safety requires a multi-faceted approach that addresses cultural biases, enhances incident investigation capabilities, and fosters a proactive safety culture. Organizations can mitigate risks, protect human capital, and ensure sustainable business success by overcoming roadblocks and embracing effective incident investigations.

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Safety Best Practices for 2024

Establishing safety as a core value will keep employees safe and avoid complacency in 2024 and beyond.

The beginning of a new year brings with it a multitude of new resolutions, new beginnings and new changes. If we employ this mentality in our personal lives, why not also in our workplaces?

The 2024 edition of NFPA 70E, Standard for Electrical Safety in the Workplace, brings with it new opportunities and standards, including setting general requirements for electrical safety-related work practices and establishing electrically safe work conditions. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA) national emphasis program’s focus on harmful conditions, behaviors and hazards can bring attention to issues within your own workplace.

Both are great opportunities to make safety a top priority and resolution in the year ahead. By incorporating the practices laid out in NFPA 70E and OSHA standards, as well as incorporating preventative measures, your workplace safety program will help to build a culture of safety. Establishing safety as a core value of your company and a part of your mission will keep your employees safe and also avoid complacency in 2024 and beyond.

WHERE TO START

The first step to improving your environment, health and safety (EHS) program is to assess the state of your EHS culture. Then, you can work toward developing a site-specific safety plan by first determining your hazards to establish how best to protect your employees. Every workplace is unique, so by understanding what you need to improve and how injuries are impacting your environment, you can begin to address the overall safety of your workplace. The basic components of any workplace safety plan include risk identification, understanding

the compliance standards applicable for your environment, and understanding your safety gaps. Assessing your risk and conducting a day-to-day job safety analysis are crucial, particularly with tasks not regularly assigned. When workers complete a task they are unfamiliar with or don’t regularly perform, the chance of injury is elevated. According to data gathered by the Electrical Safety Foundation (ESFI), between 2011 and 2022, 49% of fatalities occurred when a worker was completing a task they were not normally assigned to complete.

Additionally, 70% of electrically related fatalities happened to non-electrical workers who may not have completed any electrical safety training. It is imperative to identify the hazards that accompany every job task and have control measures in place to ensure that risk is reduced for all employees.

HOW TO GET EMPLOYEES INVOLVED

The most important items to focus on when getting employees involved in the improvement of your safety culture is proper communication and engagement. You need to bridge the gap between expectations of management and the work being conducted in the field. The bigger that gap is, the more risk you have for a weak safety culture.

Seeking employee feedback on the hazards they routinely encounter and ensuring open communication and feedback, without fear of repercussions, is critical. Open lines of communication will foster engagement and a flow of information to improve your safety culture. Communicate with your employees to demonstrate how a positive culture of safety will affect them and show them that you care about their well-being. A key factor to a plan’s success is creating accountability, commitment and engagement at all levels of

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your organization. In order to create a shared vision for safety, treat your EHS program like a marketing campaign and engage all levels to deliver appropriate and relevant messages.

When it comes to training your employees on safety principles, providing educational materials that are easy to understand is key. You can provide a step-by-step guide as well as contextual information on why procedures should be followed in order to get buy-in. It’s also imperative to provide information in as many languages as your workplace requires.

Employers and employees need to understand that compliance is the first step to keeping them safe, and the consequences for not following safety protocol are severe. As of January 2024, OSHA’s maximum penalties for serious and other-than-serious violations is $16,131 per violation, while the maximum penalty for willful or repeated violations is $161,259 per violation. According to the National Council on Compensation Insurance, the average cost for all accident claims combined between 2020-2021 was $41,757.

Compliance is the foundation that will allow your safety culture to grow, evolve and advance. By communicating incentives and consequences and launching your EHS plan as a campaign, roadblocks to engagement will be reduced and implementation increased.

By changing the narrative and focusing less on the legal requirements of compliance and more about your employee’s safety, employees will understand why your workplace safety program is crucial to everyone’s success.

2024 OUTLOOK AND CONNECTED SAFETY

The global supply chain is still suffering from pandemicrelated labor shortages and shutdowns. The widespread delay of products and shortage of personnel can lead to workplaces that focus on productivity and output instead of safety, which introduces a greater risk of injury.

Other trending workplace safety concerns include psychological safety and mental health as part of an employee’s overall well-being and heat or cold stress. Currently, there is no OSHA standard for weather-related stress, but there is a national emphasis program. It is also important to note the impact that distractions and mental load have on employees; if they’re not fully focused on a task, there is a far greater risk of being involved in an accident.

Human factors and ergonomics continue to be a safety concern, especially with the rise of remote and hybrid work. These injuries are not immediately noticed as they develop over time from repetitive tasks, bad posture or other tasks that can lead to musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs). It is an employer’s duty to ensure their employees’ safety, whether they’re working in the office or in their homes.

On that note, OSHA launched a national emphasis program in July 2023 to prevent workplace hazards in warehouses, distribution centers and high-risk retail facilities. The program places a strong focus on heat and ergonomic hazards as well as forklift safety. It is important to focus on the tools available to help manage these challenges to make sure safety doesn’t take a back seat.

Wearable safety devices and technologies can also be an invaluable tool to help keep workers safe. Wearable devices,

including gloves and fault protection soft goods, have multiple injury-reducing technologies and provide immediate haptic feedback on unsafe motions. Some devices can also monitor biometric indicators, including heart rate or temperature levels, and send alerts if they reach unsafe levels. Others, such as robots, can even replace dangerous tasks that were previously completed by humans, thereby removing the risks associated with the job completely.

Adopting new technologies can help you identify hazards and prevent accidents. With advanced analytics, you can look at the data captured to track the total incidents and identify opportunities to train your employees to avoid those situations in the future.

BE PROACTIVE ABOUT SAFETY

Demonstrating the return on investment (ROI) for any safety program can be challenging. Your Experience Modification Rate (EMR), or your organization’s historical cost of injuries and risk of future incidents, is your safety report card. This proves how you value safety and can be helpful in demonstrating ROI. A poor EMR rating, or lack of effective safety programs, may cost you future business.

It can be challenging to justify the amount of money spent on a safety program, but investing in the tools to understand and improve your safety reputation will ultimately impact your bottom line and reputation. With OSHA increasing their fines and implementing national focus programs, you may find it beneficial to investigate safety trends and the cost of potential incidents to determine if expenses are worthwhile.

A company needs to decide if they want to invest in a robust safety program or potentially pay much higher OSHA fines if an incident occurs. By working with your workers’ compensation provider to understand what your EMR rate is, you can demonstrate how much money can be saved by implementing safety practices and technologies. Your provider can help connect you with contractors to assist with the services and even help offset some of the costs.

To improve your workplace safety plan and the overall safety of your organization, you need to emphasize leading indicators over lagging indicators. Lagging indicators—injury or fatality data that occurred in the past—do not focus on how you will effectively prevent these injuries in the future.

When you focus on leading indicators, including the number of safety inspections and safety concerns that have been raised by employees, you will be able to more effectively correct hazards before they become accidents.

Understanding where your safety gaps exist and emphasizing leading indicators is a crucial step in shifting from a reactive to proactive safety culture, driving down the incidents occurring in your workplace. Utilizing safety tools, including wearable technology and predictive analytics, will help you stay ahead of incidents before they occur. EHS

Brett Brenner is the president of the Electrical Safety Foundation.

Shawn Gregg is vice president of Global Safety at Wesco.

EHS Tod ay I SPRING 2024 I WWW.EHSTODAY.COM 23

Why Happiness Matters at Work

How EHS professionals can use the power of happiness to transform workplace safety.

Happiness is important to many of us personally, and it can also have an impact on the success of our professional lives.

The emotion happiness is strongly correlated with positive factors, such as increased productivity, more creativity, strong problem-solving skills, and positive connection and collaboration. All these things make a workplace safer, more ef cient and more pro table.

More importantly, research suggests that happiness is the cause of these positive factors, not the other way around. If you want to be successful, focus on being happy. It may sound easier said than done, but happiness can impact and improve workplace safety. Let’s start by exploring the concept of happiness and how safety professionals can harness the power of happiness to transform workplaces.

WHAT IS HAPPINESS, AND WHY IS IT IMPORTANT?

I was trained as an economist, a eld that studies human behavior under scarcity. To predict behavior, we use the concept of an Econ. An Econ is a 100% rational human being who makes only logical decisions based on reason and is completely unin uenced by emotions (think of the character Spock in “Star Trek”).

Econs aren’t real people; they don’t reflect how real people behave in everyday situations. However, they can help us understand our values and the ways we make

decisions in our very messy, less than ideal, emotional day-to-day lives.

One of the most important economic theories, the ef cientmarket hypothesis, is largely based upon the fact that individuals are Econs who make rational decisions based on all relevant information that is in line with their self-interest.

But even an Econ has many choices. Do they want to have more free time or work and earn more money? Do they want to invest in health or entertainment? Do they want to spend money on family and friends or save it for themselves? The choices are endless.

How does an Econ choose? By calculating which combination of choices results in the highest utility.

The above graph visualizes the individual choice of how much free time versus work time you want to have in your

24 WWW.EHSTODAY.COM I SPRING 2024 I EHS Tod ay
HAPPINESS AND WELL-BEING 134996904 © DIEGO VITO CERVO | DREAMSTIME.COM
Individual Indi erence Curve Daily Time Budget

life. Are you an all work and no play person who spends every minute of every day working, minus the necessary time for biological needs? Or, are you an all play and no work kind of person?

Most of us are usually somewhere in between. But how do you choose where to plot yourself on the graph?

Econs know if they consume more of something, like free time, then the utility they get out of the next unit is diminishing. For example, if you are very thirsty, the first cold drink you have is going to taste heavenly. The second is still good but less so.

In the end, you have to add a lot of extra consumption to add to the pleasure, hence the curved utility line. The Econ optimizes by choosing the combination of free time and work time where the indifference curve and option line intersect.

Translating this model into language real human beings use, we can say that utility is another word for happiness. Humans make choices because they think the outcome will create the most happiness for them. But what is happiness?

Since even Econs, who are supposedly not driven by emotions, need the utility concept to make choices, we must be clear on the meaning of happiness. The eighteenth-century radical philosopher Jeremy Bentham first developed the idea that striving to experience positive emotions (e.g., happiness) is what matters in your life and, therefore, should guide your decisions. Similarly, Paul Dolan defines happiness in his book, Happiness by Design, as “experiences of pleasure and purpose over time.” Both pleasure and purpose can give you positive feelings.

Of course, more is not always better. A lot of people like watching TV to relax, but how do you feel when you’ve been watching TV all day? Or, the opposite: How do you feel when you’ve been getting things done and haven’t had a single moment for yourself?

Everyone has their own unique balance of pleasure and purpose, but there’s a general idea that can guide us: If you have a lot more purpose than pleasure, it might be a good idea to spend more time on activities that bring you joy. On the flip side, if you have a lot more pleasure than purpose, it could be beneficial to focus more on meaningful pursuits. Thus, blending pleasure with purpose in your unique proportions is your personal recipe for happiness.

WHY IS THE CONCEPT OF HAPPINESS ESSENTIAL FOR SAFETY PROFESSIONALS?

There is an inverse relationship regarding happiness that humans do not always understand intuitively. A lot of people think they’ll be happy when they get the job, the salary or the specific accomplishment they’ve worked for.

Take someone who was immensely successful: oil titan John D. Rockefeller. He was considered the wealthiest American of all time, but even in his old age, he was still busy working on projects and managing investments. At one point, a journalist asked him, “Mr. Rockefeller, you’re still working a lot—why?

How much money do you need?” He famously responded with, “Just a little bit more.”

Rockefeller believed this idea that just a little more will make you happy. But when you get more, you want more; it’s like an addiction. If people are addicted to a substance, over time they will need more and more to keep feeling that rush of euphoria. Interestingly, the inverse is true with happiness. It’s easier to reach goals when you’re already in a state of wellbeing and contentment.

Why should you, as an EHS professional, care about happiness? Because happiness can help you focus on your individual goals and move the needle for your organization.

If there’s a goal you would like to reach, such as having zero incidents on your jobsite or no environmental spills, you need to make changes to get there. One approach is to maximize the focus on that goal by being strict and controlling, perhaps even blaming or shaming people. This will probably get you some results, sure.

However, research indicates that if you are able to accomplish a higher state of well-being by creating an environment of happiness, then you will get better and more consistent positive results. Researchers also found that a 10% increase in well-being can simultaneously decrease absenteeism by 25%. Creativity will be much higher, teams will be more collaborative and people will remain in their positions longer. In other words, if workers are happy, you’ll have less turnover and be better positioned to reach your desired end results.

Thus, happiness and well-being are not just good for individual employees; rather, creating a happy and positive work environment is tantamount to building successful organizations.

WHAT ARE HAPPINESS DRIVERS?

If happiness is so important in the workplace, how do we cultivate it? Also, is happiness an end state or a temporary state of being?

To answer these questions, we need to look at another dimension and divide happiness into two categories: remembered (or evaluated) and experienced. This involves different parts of the brain—feeling and sensing versus memory and fantasy.

For many people, there is a big difference between these two. If, for example, you call someone at work and ask them how they are doing in that moment, they might say they feel stressed, in conflict or negative. However, if you ask them how they are doing at a later time, they might tell you they love their job and wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.

Therefore, happiness is something that you evaluate over time and something that you experience in every moment. Both experiences exist, so it’s important to understand the context.

Happiness is an end result for an individual experiencing positive emotions. To become happy, you must focus on happiness drivers, or things that create positive emotions. The big question then becomes: How do you determine if a given experience causes you to feel positively or negatively?

EHS Tod ay I SPRING 2024 I WWW.EHSTODAY.COM 25

Sonja Lyubomirsky, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Riverside, has explored this topic extensively. Her research shows that about 50% of your emotions (positive and negative) are determined by your genetics, personality and past experiences—things you can’t necessarily change. While this is a large percentage, it still means you have control of half of your well-being.

Of that, 40% comes from intentional activities. These are the things we decide about our life and things we intentionally do, such as our field of work or who we choose as a partner. The remaining 10% is the environment you live in, which is also largely under your control. These are happiness drivers that we should review so we can determine what circumstances make people happy.

Many say that money, knowledge or fame makes people happy. But, as we have seen, striving for those things can become almost an addiction. That’s because even if you get that promotion or house, you aren’t guaranteed to be happy.

Take money, for example. Data tells us that the first $25,000 you make is very important for happiness because it covers your necessities; it is also the level where money can buy freedom, time and choice. But the correlation between money and happiness peaks around $75,000. Any earning above that sees only a slight increase of happiness.

Eventually, there comes a point where while income increases, happiness actually decreases. And the point where the happiness gains in income disappear isn’t in the millions; it’s around $200,000, according to recent research.

One of the things that truly makes people happy, according to researchers, is the number of meaningful relationships they have. People who interact on a deeper level and operate with honesty, openness and authenticity are generally very happy.

HOW DOES HAPPINESS TRANSFORM THE ROLE OF SAFETY?

Now that we understand more about what happiness is, what makes people happier and what doesn’t, let’s apply it to safety.

If we know that making connections with people at a meaningful level—without stress and blame—is important, then you need to spend less time on administrative work. You need to walk the factory floor, jobsite or other workplace environment

to see what workers are doing and talk to them. Then, you must take those concerns to management so they can be addressed. This shows workers that you are listening and value their insights and contributions as well as care about their safety.

Prioritize getting out of the office, watching workers and talking with them. This is not to say you neglect your other responsibilities but that you make the time to inspire and connect with people. You are demonstrating that being with your people, where the work happens, is a priority. It’s also key to improving safety—not an afterthought or an inconvenience.

To do this, you also need to have the right tools and processes in place. This means not having to put out fires daily by conducting safety reporting, incident investigations, or dealing with other known safety problems, such as slips, trips and falls. Instead, you can focus on improving workplace safety.

Learn how workers do their jobs, watch for actions that might put them at risk of injury and offer alternatives. It may seem inconvenient to stop work, but redesigning procedures saves time and money in the long term. For example, engineering controls to reduce strain on workers’ backs can reduce their risk of ergonomic injury, improve their productivity and give them a literal bounce in their step. When workers feel better, their outlook toward work (and life) changes. This is just one way that safety can improve workers’ happiness—and it creates a domino effect.

If workers aren’t getting hurt, then more workers are able to show up and do their job. That means fewer days off work due to injury. That means less scrambling to maintain safe staffing levels and better team morale. That means the money that was being spent on workers’ compensation claims can instead go toward new personal protective equipment, technology or safety programs to address other areas of concern.

Instead, safety can improve in more and different ways because efforts and dollars go farther. Safety professionals can also have an easier time talking about budgets with management and gaining buy-in at all levels. Plus, a company that is a great place to work can more easily withstand some of the current challenges, such as labor shortages.

Shifting the focus to happiness will make you more creative by putting you in a better position to look for waste or overburden, which can lead to employee injuries, burnout or turnover.

CONCLUSION

As a society, we focus on happiness—and for good reason. Happiness is a mindset that can yield real benefits for our minds, bodies and spirits. It’s important to prioritize happiness at work, too.

By creating environments that put the happiness of workers first, you will find your workplace to be more efficient, productive and better positioned to reach important safety goals, such as zero incidents. A safer workplace makes for a better workplace for everyone, but perhaps especially for safety professionals who toil tirelessly each and every day. EHS

Sjoerd Nanninga is co-founder of Unite-X, a provider of safety software that helps manufacturing organizations achieve Operational Safety Excellence (OSE) and encourages continuous improvement.

HAPPINESS AND WELL-BEING 26 WWW.EHSTODAY.COM I SPRING 2024 I EHS Tod ay
Intentional activities (40%) Genetic Set Point (50%)
What determines happiness? Life Circumstances (10%)
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An Act of Courage

Not all heroes wear capes. Some ask you how you’re doing.

Iam a shy, quiet and extremely private person. But, in the spirit of improving workplace safety, I’m going be brave and share a moment from my career that has had a profound impact on me.

At a previous job, my manager abruptly walked into my office, shut the door and sat down. I did a fast mental rundown of what I had done that day because I thought I was in trouble.

To my surprise, my manager began explaining everyone struggles sometimes, and there’s absolutely no shame in speaking with a professional or taking medications. They also shared that there have been times when they have sought help for their own mental health.

It turned out to be a miscommunication, as someone tagged me on a post about poor mental health on social media. I hadn’t seen the notification, but my manager did—and immediately sprang into action. My manager did not have to check-in with me. My manager did not have to share their experiences. My manager did not have to do anything, really.

By acting to keep people safe, you can make a meaningful impact in the lives of others. While you may be used to acting to keep workers physically safe, their mental and emotional health is just as important.

I understand that it can be uncomfortable to talk about personal matters. I know I’m guilty of hiding behind the mask of professionalism and limiting small talk to the weather. Nevertheless, if you see something that concerns you, I hope you are courageous enough to speak up or reach out.

But they did, and it remains the kindest thing a supervisor has ever done for me. In fact, it is one of the kindest things anyone has ever done for me, period.

Recently, I was talking with some safety professionals about creating a strong safety program and being an effective safety manager. Despite using different words, they all said basically the same thing: To have a safe workplace, you have to show people you care.

That means knowing about employees and their family. That means asking employees questions about their lives. That means connecting with employees and engaging with them on an emotional level rather than just in a transactional nature. That means being brave enough to share, and sometimes even be vulnerable. We all want to feel like we matter. It’s so easy to get stuck in the daily routine and focus on the work at hand. As safety professionals, you are in a position to walk the floor and talk with employees. You’re in a position to intervene if you see something concerning, be it an electrical hazard, trip hazard or a worker’s well-being.

COVID-19 has laid bare the fact that people are struggling in so many different ways. It doesn’t matter if it’s a professional or personal matter; our troubles follow us wherever we go.

It’s past time we dismissed the idea that we check our personal problems at the door when we clock in to work. Instead, let’s decide to care for the whole employee and invite them to talk about anything that’s weighing on them.

Sometimes, people just need an ear to listen to them. Sometimes, as was the case with me, there might be a miscommunication that’s easily resolved. Sometimes, people really do need help but are unable to get it. That’s when you must put your own fears aside and be bold.

This is by no means an easy task, but speaking from personal experience, I can tell you it is everything. I can assure you that employees will remember—and appreciate—that you took the first step.

We often talk about making sure people leave work the same way they entered. I disagree. I think we need to make sure they leave work in a better state than the way they entered. Showing employes that you care is one of the most important things you can do—and it goes a long way to creating a safer workplace.

32 WWW.EHSTODAY.COM I SPRING 2024 I EHS Tod ay Send an e-mail with your thoughts to nstempak@endeavorb2b.com.
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