How Much Will the Election Results Influence OSHA?

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OSHA Election Results

OSHA will take one of two very different approaches to health and safety rulemaking and enforcement over the next four years, depending on who emerges victorious in November’s U.S. Presidential election. A recent webinar explored how those visions differ and hypothesized what tangible effects either a Joe Biden or Donald Trump victory will have on the agency.


The Pandemic Priority


Regardless of who wins, OSHA’s key focus will invariably be on managing the current COVID-19, pandemic, asserted Kate McMahon, partner at Conn Maciel Carey, the Washington, D.C. law firm focused on labor and employment, workplace safety and litigation that hosted the webinar. However, the form that management will take will look significantly different depending on who prevails at the polls. If it’s Biden, it is highly likely his administration will issue a federal-level Emergency Temporary Standard (ETS) within its first 100 days.

“It will codify and make mandatory a lot … Read more...

How 5G Technology will Revolutionize the Manufacturing Industry

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5G Technology Tech Tuesdays

In the words of author Sukant Ratnakar: “Our future success is directly proportional to our ability to understand, adopt and integrate new technology into our work.” While there are many who believe that technology is the engine behind driving progress, there are others who view these advancements are a sign of the end of humanity. 5G technology, while at its infancy from a widespread adoption perspective, just happens to be one of them.

Let’s demystify 5G technology, and explore its impacts to the manufacturing sector, with a special focus on the manufacturing safety.


The Basics of 5G Technology


5G technology, because it’s the fifth generation of wireless networking technology, can hyper-accelerate the speed of mobile phones to approximately 10 gigabits per second. To put it into context, this is more than 600X faster that today’s 4G-powered phones. On top of that, it serves as a catalyst … Read more...

How to Improve Safety Behaviors Using Positive Consequences

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Improve safety behaviors using positive consequences
Clyde, like me, responds best to positive consequences such as praise or recognition when he exhibits the behaviors I require of him.

Like many people, I recently adopted a dog. Actually, I adopted a puppy that I named Clyde from a local dog rescue. One of the positive consequences of the pandemic is that adoptions of rescue dogs are at an all-time high.

Clyde came home with me at 14 weeks, a bundle of energy and affection who turned out to be a mix every dog breed I never wanted rolled into one, and I say that with affection and love.

I’m a big advocate of training, both for dogs and for people. I’ll even take it a step further: I’m a big advocate of positive training, for dogs and for people. Clyde is rewarded when he does something he’s ask to do: sit, stay, give paw, come when called, … Read more...

High Quality of Healthcare = A Robust Quality Framework + a Strong Maturity Model

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Cost of Quality in Healthcare

“Health care is vital to all of us some of the time, but public health is vital to all of us all of the time,” was aptly stated by American pediatric surgeon and public health administrator C. Everett Koop. While that statement is simple, the healthcare industry is farthest from that.

Like many industries, healthcare has some challenges that are endemic to that industry. Issues such as poor communication amongst teams, procedural workarounds and bias or preferential treatment to senior physicians can often have serious repercussions from misdiagnosed treatment to fatalities.

But all is not lost. In fact, some agencies and organizations have been able overcome challenges through frameworks that focus on the culture of quality.

Let’s take a further look.


The Center for Disease Control’s Key Recommendations to Protect Both the Safety and Quality of Patient Care


According to the U.S. Center for Disease Control (CDC), there are ten … Read more...

Leaders2Leaders: How Can You Maintain a Safety Culture Over the Long Term?

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Avoid focusing too much on a top-down approach to safety culture. Employees must feel they own health and safety in their individual workplaces.
Avoid focusing too much on a top-down approach to safety culture. Employees must feel they own health and safety in their individual workplaces.

To be truly effective, health and safety needs to move beyond policy and become rooted deep into the culture of the organisation.

Great safety cultures do not happen by chance. The best safety cultures are continuous works in progress and need careful managing by health and safety leaders. As we learn in the sixth episode of Leaders2Leaders, “How Can You Maintain a Safety Culture Over the Long Term?” culture and culture improvement cannot be limited to small pockets of the business. It must run from senior leadership through to the shop floor and even embrace third-party contractors, according to a group of five safety leaders from companies noted for their world-class safety cultures.

“People ask me, how many people I have in my safety organisation? My answer? … Read more...

Maintaining Quality in a Time of Uncertainty: Our Upcoming Expert Connect Session on October 28th

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Expert Connecting Quality in a Time of Uncertainty

According to best-selling author Linda Lambert: “One good conversation can shift the direction of change forever.”

Designed to provide attendees with an exciting experience based on the exchange of ideas, experiences and industry knowledge, our Expert Connect series is a true testament to our continued focus on trying to provide our customers, prospects and community with a breadth of experiences.


Introducing Our Third Session: Maintaining Quality in a Time of Uncertainty


We’re excited to announce our third session, Maintaining Quality in a Time of Uncertainty, which will be held on Wednesday, October 28th!

This session is designed to explore how COVID-19 has changed your manufacturing operations and strategies for ensuring quality does not falter. Attendees will learn:

  1. The unique challenges experienced this year.
  2. How to adjust quality programs to ensure consistency.
  3. Best practices for using your quality data for decision-making.

While the facilitators will start off by providing their … Read more...

How You Can Reduce Your Health and Safety Incidents by 25% in One Year

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Reduce Health and Safety Incidents by 25%

In the words of writer and poet Khalil Gibran: “Progress is not in enhancing what is, but in advancing toward what will be.” While experience is undoubtedly the best teacher, second to that is learning through the journeys of others.

In the business world, this comes in the form of case studies or customer success stories. In studies conducted by McKinsey & Company, they identified five limiting mind-sets that affect an organization’s safety culture. However, by “harnessing approaches to overcome them, companies can achieve rapid, sustained change.”

This now brings us to why we are here—to examine the journey of how Moss, a leading US-based construction company, was able to successfully reduce its Health and Safety incidents by 25% in one year.


Moss’ Strong Foundation of Safety Culture and Laser-Focused Health and Safety Goals


It’s important to recognize that Moss already had a strong safety culture. … Read more...

How Home Renovation Projects Have Exposed Supply Chain Fragility

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Supply Chain Fragility

Like many people around the world, you’ve probably been working from home for the past six months. Perhaps you’ve also been monitoring your children as they navigate the improvised labyrinth of online learning. All day, every day, you’ve been immersed in your home environment far more than you ever thought you would be. It seems like you’re constantly preparing food, loading the dishwasher, doing laundry, getting snacks, and engaging in a seemingly infinite number of other mundane activities that have turned your quiet home into a concerto for frazzled knowledge-worker soloist and obsolete-appliance orchestra.

If this is you, then perhaps your familiarity with your home has bred contempt for its flaws. Perhaps, you reason, if you’re to be imprisoned in your home during the dreaded second wave of the pandemic, it’s time to switch things up a bit, time to retire your veteran appliances and draft in a new generation … Read more...

The Power of Gratitude: Taking a Closer Look at What We’re Thankful for this Thanksgiving

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Being Grateful this Thanksgiving

While the sights and smells of Thanksgiving conjure up fond memories of family gatherings, turkey and homemade pies and watching movies on TV, it’s important to remember what the true meaning behind Thanksgiving is: to celebrate gratitude.


The Universal and Timeless Value of Gratitude


In the words of American writer Melody Beattie, “Gratitude turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos into order, confusion into clarity … it makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow.”

It doesn’t end here.

According to experts at Forbes, various studies have shown that there are seven proven benefits of feeling and expressing gratitude.

  1. It improves physical health:
    • Grateful people exercise more often (than their counterparts) and make regular trips to the doctor’s office, thereby, showing signs of better overall health.
  2. It enhances empathy and reduces aggression:
    • Grateful people
… Read more...

Project Management Checklist: Your Steps to Success

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Project Management Checklist

As famously stated by author Joy Gumz: “Operations keeps the lights on, strategy provides a light at the end of the tunnel, but project management is the train engine that moves the organization forward.”

While that seems pretty logical and relatively simple, not everything is as simple as it looks. To highlight this, studies show that only 58% of business leaders claim to fully understand the value and applicability of project management. Translation: that leaves room for opportunity.


The Added Layer of Complexity in Safety Projects


From an end-goal perspective, most objectives of safety projects are similar to those in other aspects of business: delivering it on time, staying on budget and managing customer expectations, whether internal or external.

However, what makes safety projects that much more challenging is ensuring that worker safety will always be priority number one. Frankly speaking, that is no easy feat.


Must-Do’s for Safety Managers
… Read more...