For most companies, the path to identifying and mitigating workplace hazards usually begins with a workplace inspection. How else can you find out all of the potential hazards that must be addressed? Of course, every workplace inspection must be conducted in an efficient manner to ensure that everything has been sufficiently identified. If you cut corners or do something the wrong way, you’ll be doing your company and your employees a disservice.

As with just about anything else, workplace health and safety often require a proactive approach. You never want to wait for something to go wrong and then act. By then, you’ll have experienced a workplace accident that could have been prevented.

There should be no debate about the importance of occupational health and safety in the workplace. It takes on particular importance for companies that operate in the manufacturing and construction industries. In these industries, safety needs to be taken seriously and companies need to be extra thorough in their approach.

One of the most important parts of managing a safety program is tracking and evaluating progress toward improved workplace health and safety. Key performance indicators or KPIs allow you to do that consistently and predictably.

How do you set your safety goals? How do you decide on the focus of your safety programs?

As they say in the theater, “The show must go on!"  If you think about it, keeping up with your safety program isn’t really any different, is it?  Maintaining your safety program and ensuring safety regulations are being followed are necessary to keep workers safe, regardless of what’s going on in the world.

Building a successful safety program is only half the battle. Once you’ve built a program you can be proud of, you have to make sure it stays that way. As Warren Buffet once quipped, it takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it, and the same thing can be said of your safety program.

An employee is seriously injured and OSHA slaps your company with fines. A safety referral results in a fine.

As a safety professional, your job revolves around your peers. You have to train them, provide them with the right tools, and ensure that they’re performing their jobs in the safest manner possible.

The process of determining recordability can sometimes be very taxing—both professionally and emotionally.  If you’re like most EHS professionals, it’s one of the more stressful parts of your job, especially when you have to tell a member of management that they’ve had a recordable injury.