The First-Year Safety Manager's Guide to Running Effective Drills

Nobody hands you a manual when you step into your first EHS role. You inherit a binder of procedures that may or may not reflect what actually happens on the floor, a calendar of required drills, and the quiet expectation that you'll figure it out.

Drills are one of the first real tests of that expectation. They're visible, they involve the whole workforce, and when they go sideways, everyone notices. For a first-year safety manager, that combination can feel like a lot of pressure.

The good news is that running effective drills isn't about perfection. It's about preparation, structure, and knowing what to look for. This guide covers the fundamentals every new safety manager needs to get drills right from the start.

Start With What You've Got

Before you plan your first drill, spend time understanding the program you've inherited. Pull the last 12 months of drill records (or as many as you can) and ask yourself a few questions.

• What types of drills were conducted, and how often?
• Were participation rates consistent across shifts and departments? Were any deficiencies documented, and if so, were they resolved?
• Has the emergency action plan been updated recently, and do the drills reflect those updates?
• Where did the performance meet expectations?
• Where did it fall short?
• What conditions contributed to the gaps?
• Were the changes made?
• Were they effective?
• Do they need to be tested in the next exercise?

You're not auditing your predecessor. You're building a baseline. What the records tell you, and what they don't tell you, will shape your priorities for the year ahead.

If the records are thin or incomplete, that's useful information too. It tells you where to focus early and gives you a clean starting point to build from.

Know Your Regulatory Obligations Before You Plan Anything

A safety manager drill guide that skips the regulatory foundation isn't doing its job. Before you schedule a single exercise, make sure you understand what's actually required in your workplace.

For most general industry employers in the US, OSHA 1910.38 is the starting point. It requires a written Emergency Action Plan, defined evacuation procedures, designated employee roles, and documented review with each employee under specific conditions. If your facility handles flammable materials, 1910.39 on fire prevention plans applies as well.

Depending on your industry, site-specific standards may layer on top of those. Construction, maritime, healthcare, and process safety environments each carry their own drill requirements. If you're not sure what applies to your site, your state OSHA office or a quick review of your facility's permits and applicable standards will get you oriented.

The goal at this stage isn't to become a regulatory expert overnight. It's to make sure your drill calendar is grounded in what's actually required, not just what's always been done.

Build a Drill Plan, Not Just a Drill Calendar

There's a difference between scheduling drills and planning them. A calendar tells you when something will happen. A plan tells you what it's supposed to accomplish.

For each drill on your schedule, define the following before you communicate anything to the workforce:

Objective. What is this drill testing? A full evacuation? Shelter-in-place response? A specific team's emergency communication protocol? The more specific the objective, the easier it is to evaluate performance against it.

Scenario. What's the simulated event? A fire in a specific building area, a chemical release, a medical emergency? The scenario should be realistic enough to prompt genuine responses without creating confusion about whether the emergency is real.

Participants. Who is covered by this drill? All employees, a specific shift, a specific department? Contractors and visitors present during the drill should be accounted for as well.

Observers. Who will be watching and recording performance during the drill? You shouldn't be running the drill and documenting it simultaneously. Identify at least one other person to help capture observations in real time.

Success criteria. What does a good outcome look like? Evacuation completed within a defined time window, full headcount achieved, emergency contacts notified within a specific timeframe. Without benchmarks, you can't evaluate improvement.

Communicate Clearly Before the Drill

One of the most common reasons drills underperform is that employees don't understand what they're expected to do. That's not a workforce problem. It's a communication problem, and it's fixable.

Before each drill, make sure supervisors have been briefed on their specific roles, employees know what signal or trigger initiates the drill, everyone understands that participation is mandatory and what that looks like for their position, and any employees with designated emergency roles, floor wardens, first aid responders, evacuation assistants, have reviewed their responsibilities recently.

For employees who are new, on a different shift than usual, or whose responsibilities have changed since the last drill, this is also a good moment to ensure the EAP has been formally reviewed with them. Under 1910.38, that review is a regulatory requirement under specific conditions, not just a best practice.

During the Drill: Observe, Don't Manage

This is one of the hardest adjustments for new safety managers. Your instinct when something goes wrong during a drill is to fix it. Step in, redirect, and correct the mistakes in the moment.

Resist that instinct, at least until there's a genuine safety concern.

Drills reveal gaps. If you smooth over every gap as it appears, you lose the information you need to improve the program. Let the exercise run. Let the failure points show themselves. Document what you see as specifically as possible, because those observations are the raw material for every improvement you'll make afterward.

What you're watching for during the drill includes response time from trigger to action, whether employees report to the correct assembly areas, whether headcount procedures work as designed, how well emergency roles are executed, any physical barriers or bottlenecks that slow response, and any confusion about procedures or responsibilities.

Write it down in the moment. Memory is unreliable, and specific observations make much stronger corrective action records than general impressions.

The Debrief Is Where Learning Actually Happens

Many first-year safety managers run a solid drill and then write a summary and move on. That's a missed opportunity.

The debrief, conducted as soon as possible after the drill while observations are still fresh, is where the real value of the exercise gets captured. Done well; it turns a performance event into a learning event.

Bring together your observers, key supervisors, and any employees with designated emergency roles. Walk through what happened against what was planned.

Ask the people in the room what they noticed. Field teams almost always see things that observers miss, and creating space for that input builds the kind of trust that makes your safety program stronger over time.

Come out of the debrief with a short list of specific corrective actions, each with a named owner and a due date. Vague commitments to "improve communications" or "revisit the evacuation map" don't drive change. Specific tasks assigned to specific people do.

Close the Loop Before the Next Drill

Corrective actions from drills are only valuable if they get resolved. Before your next drill runs, review the open items from the last one.

This is the improvement cycle that separates a safety program that performs on paper from one that actually makes the workforce safer. And for a first-year safety manager, demonstrating this cycle early, even imperfectly, builds credibility with leadership and with the teams you're responsible for protecting.

Use the Right Tools From the Start

Managing drills manually, through spreadsheets, email chains, and paper sign-in sheets, is workable when you're running two drills a year at a single-site location. It becomes a liability as your program grows, as your workforce changes, and as regulatory scrutiny increases.

Starting your career with the right infrastructure in place makes everything easier. EHS Insight's Training Module gives new safety managers a structured way to plan, schedule, document, and track drills from a single platform, with participation records, observation capture, corrective action workflows, and reporting built in. When your program is organized from day one, you spend less time tracking down records and more time improving what the records reveal.

You Don't Have to Be Perfect. You Have to Be Improving.

The best safety managers aren't the ones who run flawless drills. They're the ones who run honest ones, document what happens, fix what's broken, and build a program that gets better every cycle.

In your first year, that means being willing to find the gaps, even when they're uncomfortable, and treating every drill as an opportunity to understand your workplace a little better. The workforce will notice that commitment. So will leadership. And over time, it's what turns a first-year safety manager into one of the most trusted people in the building.

FAQ

Q: What should a new safety manager do before planning their first drill? A: Start by reviewing the last 12 months of drill records from your predecessor. Look at what types of drills were conducted, whether participation was consistent across shifts and departments, whether deficiencies were documented and resolved, and whether the current emergency action plan is reflected in past exercises. Thin or incomplete records are useful information too — they tell you where to focus early and give you a clean baseline to build from.

Q: What regulatory requirements should a first-year safety manager understand before scheduling drills? A: For most general industry employers, OSHA 1910.38 is the foundation — it requires a written Emergency Action Plan, defined evacuation procedures, designated employee roles, and documented plan reviews with each employee under specific conditions. If your facility handles flammable materials, 1910.39 on fire prevention plans also applies. Depending on your industry, additional standards may apply for construction, maritime, healthcare, or process safety environments. The goal isn't to become a regulatory expert overnight — it's to make sure your drill calendar is grounded in what's actually required.

Q: What's the difference between a drill calendar and a drill plan? A: A calendar tells you when a drill will happen. A plan defines what it's supposed to accomplish. For each drill, you should define a specific objective (what's being tested), a realistic scenario, who the participants are, who will be observing and documenting performance, and measurable success criteria such as evacuation completion time or headcount benchmarks. Without that structure, you can't evaluate whether the drill actually served its purpose.

Q: Why shouldn't a safety manager intervene when something goes wrong during a drill? A: Drills are designed to surface gaps. If you step in and correct problems as they happen, you lose the information you need to improve the program. Unless there's a genuine safety concern, let the exercise run and document what you observe as specifically as possible. Those real-time observations become the foundation for corrective actions, and specific records are far more defensible than general impressions written from memory after the fact.

Q: How should a first-year safety manager run an effective post-drill debrief? A: Hold the debrief as soon as possible after the drill while observations are still fresh. Bring together observers, key supervisors, and employees with designated emergency roles. Walk through what happened against what was planned, and actively ask field teams what they noticed — they often see things observers miss. Come out of the debrief with a short list of specific corrective actions, each with a named owner and a due date. Vague commitments don't drive change; specific tasks assigned to specific people do.