Have You Started Planning for Post-Pandemic Procurement?

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Many organizations now are considering more options, such as repatriation and re-shoring, to increase the agility of their supply chains.

Over the last few decades, companies have been optimizing their supply chains to lower costs, reduce inventory and maximize asset utilization. Supply chain globalization offered many benefits. It opened new markets and new sourcing options and lowered costs from suppliers. Globalization and offshore manufacturing became so common that by 2018, China accounted for around 28% of all global manufacturing output and most companies around the world had become dependent on offshore manufacturing.

As successful as globalization was for companies – increasing their revenues, margins and profitability – it also created a vulnerability that was hidden until a Black Swan event such as the global pandemic brought it to light. COVID-19 exposed some significant vulnerabilities in global supply chains that companies are still wrestling with over a year later.

The COVID-19

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Are You Ready to Build a Principle-Based Safety Culture?

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Is worker safety and health the foundation upon which everything else at your organization is built?

Empowering a workforce to achieve and sustain safety performance success begins with one critical question: Is safety a core value at your organization? Or, better yet, is it the organization’s principal value?

Is worker safety and health the foundation upon which everything else is built? It’s easy to test, to see and to feel when you achieve it.

The benefits of creating a principle-based safety culture are many. You feel it because it is real, it’s the norm, it’s the way things are done around here. You know a company has achieved it when:

  • You read it in things such as vision and mission statements.
  • The senior leadership team is engaged and actively demonstrating their value.
  • You see plant managers and their direct teams on the manufacturing floor, engaging with and learning from the
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Data Quality – It’s a Dirty Job, but Someone’s Got To Do It

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Data quality is the foundation for EHS insights.
Forty-seven percent of newly-created data records have at least one critical (e.g., work-impacting) error.

Data quality is the foundation that EHS insights are built upon. When EHS data suffers from poor data quality, insights are eroded and the information that was once on a stable foundation is no longer suitable for analytics.

Many companies starting their data analytics journey make the mistake of skipping the data cleaning process all together. None of us want to see how the sausage is made, we just want the bratwurst to magically appear. But as we have seen over and over, insightful analytics cannot be achieved with poor data quality.

Only 3% of Data Meets Quality Standards

A 2017 Harvard Business Review article, “Only 3% of Companies’ Data Meets Basic Quality Standards,” outlined the data quality crisis best, stating that, “Forty-seven percent of newly-created data records have at least one critical (e.g., work-impacting) error.”… Read more...

Brand Damage, Financial Liability, Criminal Charges: The High Cost of Not Meeting Regulatory Compliance Obligations

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AI can reduce the cost of regulatory compliance
ehsAI’s next-wave compliance technology uses a patent-pending artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) solution to analyze, organize and summarize complex regulatory documents.

Around the world, organizations in every industry have obligations to follow the requirements outlined in various rules, regulations, permits and directives. These requirements outline the way in which a company operates day-to-day, its interaction with the environment and its obligations to the health and safety of its workers.

Regulations can be mandated by any level of government or can be specific within certain industries, with a few important examples being Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSH Act), the Clean Air Act and the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA).

When organizations don’t meet their regulatory obligations, the result can be brand damage, financial liability and even criminal charges. For example, Volkswagen has paid billions to settle allegations that it used elaborate technology to cheat emissions tests and deceive … Read more...

OSHA Issues Emergency Temporary Standard to Protect Healthcare Workers from COVID-19

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The U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) announced on June 10 it will issue an emergency temporary standard (ETS) to protect healthcare workers from contracting coronavirus. The standard focuses on healthcare workers most likely to have contact with someone infected with the virus.

In addition to the healthcare-focused ETS, OSHA is issuing updated guidance to help employers and workers in other industries protect workers who are still not vaccinated, with a special emphasis on other industries noted for prolonged close-contacts like meat processing, manufacturing, seafood and grocery and high-volume retail. The agency also issued a new general industry guidance, and both the guidance and the ETS are aligned with guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“Too many of our frontline healthcare workers continue to be at high risk of contracting the coronavirus,” said U.S. Secretary of Labor Marty Walsh. “As I said when … Read more...

FY 2022 U.S. Federal Budget Includes $140 Million Additional Funding for MSHA and OSHA Budgets

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U.S. President Joe Biden has proposed key investments to strengthen the unemployment insurance system, expand pathways to good-paying jobs, safeguard workers’ health through increases in the MSHA and OSHA budgets and create greater financial security for workers.

The Biden-Harris administration submitted the president’s budget for Fiscal Year 2022 to Congress.

“The president’s budget renews the Department of Labor’s commitment to help America’s workers, particularly those from disadvantaged communities, find pathways to high-quality, good-paying jobs,” said Secretary of Labor Marty Walsh. “The president’s initiatives also restore the department’s capacity to protect the health, safety, rights and financial security of all workers. Additionally, the American Jobs Plan’s investments further enhance the department’s ability to meet its mission by creating pathways to millions of high-quality jobs and rebuilding our country’s infrastructure.”

The budget includes the two historic plans the president has already put forward – the American Jobs Plan and the American Families … Read more...

Taking a Deeper Dive into the Clean Energy ESG Goal

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Taking a Deeper Dive into the Clean Energy ESG Goal

Goal #7 of the United Nation’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development is Clean, Affordable Energy. Are you ready to meet that goal? Is your company wasting money and creating an ESG reporting nightmare with excessive CO2 emissions?

Our new eguide, “Reporting ESG Goals: Affordable, Clean Energy,” provides insight about ISO 50001 – the ISO management system standard for energy management – and discusses the requirements for an organization that wishes to manage energy performance.

Improving energy performance contributes to wider CO2 and sustainability measures, but other measures to achieve this are not required within an ISO 50001 management system. This does not mean that organizations cannot use ISO 50001 to contribute to their wider sustainability agenda. It just means that those organizations applying for certification need to ensure that they deliver better energy performance in addition to implementing measures to reduce CO2.

Let’s face it; there … Read more...

Kristen Duda, Intelex EHSQ Ecosystem and Alliances Leader, Recognized as one of CRN’s 2021 Women of the Channel

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Kristen Duda, vice president of Strategic Alliances at Intelex, named to the highly respected Women of the Channel list for 2021

CRN®, a brand of The Channel Company, has named Kristen Duda, vice president of Strategic Alliances at Intelex, to the highly respected Women of the Channel list for 2021. This annual list recognizes the unique strengths, vision and achievements of female leaders in the IT channel who pushed forward with comprehensive business plans, marketing initiatives and other innovative ideas to support their partners and customers, helping them through the uncertainty brought on by the global COVID-19 pandemic.

Duda, a professional engineer who has 18 years of experience in EHSQ, is an integral part of the growing success of Intelex because of her devotion to building value-based connected EHSQ ecosystem partnerships. Being included in the 2021 CRN Women of the Channel listing marks Duda’s second accolade from CRN in 2021, coming on the heels of being recognized as a 2021 CRN Channel Chief earlier this year.
 
“CRN’s 2021 Women … Read more...

ABC: Calling All Construction Companies That Want to be 600% Safer!

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With the best practices outlined in the 2021 Safety Performance Report from the Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC), construction companies can drastically improve their safety performance.

The 2021 Safety Performance Report is an annual assessment that furthers the construction industry’s understanding of how to achieve world-class safety. The companies highlighted in the report deploy ABC’s STEP Safety Management System. The report details the drastic impact of using proactive safety practices to reduce recordable incidents by up to 85%, making the best-performing companies more than six times safer than the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics industry average.

“Leading from a posture of safety and committing to a culture of safety create the conditions for all in the construction industry to complete their work without incident and go home safe and healthy every day,” said Greg Sizemore, ABC vice president of health, safety, environment and workforce development. “ABC’s Safety Performance Report creates … Read more...

Digging In to Improve Mining Safety: Pain Points and Solutions

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Mining safety is on an upswing in recent years. Approximately 230,000 miners work across 11,500 metal/nonmetal mines in the U.S., while 64,000 work in the nation’s 1,000 coal mines. The mining sector employs 3.7 million+ workers worldwide and is structured according to the substance being mined, the type of excavation taking place (either surface mining or underground mining) and by the mine’s lifecycle/development phase. Environmental and safety concerns/priorities change based on the substance being mined, the type of excavation and the phase of the lifecycle.  

In 2020, the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) reported 29 mining fatalities, making it the sixth consecutive year that mining fatalities were below 30. Among those fatalities, five occurred in coal mines, a historic low.

Three deaths occurred in Kentucky and Louisiana; two each in Arizona, California, Georgia, Iowa, Texas and West Virginia; and one each in Colorado, Illinois, Kansas, Michigan, Missouri, Nevada, New … Read more...