Author Archives: Scott Gaddis

About Scott Gaddis

Scott Gaddis leads the integration of the Intelex EHSQ Alliance in thought leadership and building partnerships with top influencers in EHS, working with professionals across the globe to deliver a platform for sharing information and collectively driving solutions that mitigate workplace loss. Scott has more than 25 years in EHS leadership experience in heavy manufacturing, pharmaceuticals and packaging. Before joining Intelex, Scott served as Vice President, EHS for Coveris High Performance Packaging, Executive Director of EHS at Bristol-Myers Squibb, and Global Leader for Occupational Safety and Health at Kimberly-Clark Corporation.

Enhanced Compliance: OSHA’s 2024 Updates to 300 and 301 Forms for Accurate Safety Reporting

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Two EHS professionals considering health and safety data

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has amended the regulation 29 CFR part 1904 for occupational injury and illness record keeping. Under the amended regulation, organizations in certain industries with more than 100 employees must now electronically submit Form 300-Log of Work-Related Injuries and Illnesses and Form 301-Injury and Illness Incident Reporting once a year. This rule becomes effective on January 1, 2024. 

Organizations will also be required to submit the company name when submitting Form 300 and Form 301 data. OSHA intends to publish some of the data on its public website, as it believes the information will promote informed decision making for employers, workers and customers relating to the organization’s safety record. OSHA believes this approach will provide incentive for organizations to increase their efforts to reduce injuries and illnesses. It is important to note that OSHA will not post information that could reasonably identify individuals … Read more...

Continuous Improvement and Fall Prevention: Using the Hierarchy of Controls to Prevent Slips, Trips and Falls

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In Part III of our blog series during National Safety Stand-Down to Prevent Falls in Construction, Scott Gaddis looks at using the Hierarchy of Controls to promote a proactive safety approach to preventing falls in the workplace.

Employing the Hierarchy of Controls

Understanding control and how best to manage your walking and working surfaces program are more significant than the outputs of the risk assessment process. The process defines good control actions specific to hazards and risks, but it is not the only process that can be used. While I’m a firm believer in the risk matrix and scoring approach, I also would recommend the widely accepted approach within the safety and health practice called the hierarchy of controls. This process is simple to understand and is quite useful in gauging the control appetite of the organization. It should serve as the overarching methodology for how we best deliver the … Read more...

Fall Prevention Strategies: How Risk Management Can Prevent Slips, Trips and Falls

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In Part I of this blog, Scott Gaddis looked at how falls in the workplace happen and the impact they can have on workers. In Part II, Scott examines the role of risk assessments in preventing falls from happening in the first place.

Risk Assessment

The objective of risk assessment and analysis is to understand the level of risk associated with the hazards found in the work environment as well as the concerns related to how people are navigating walking and working surfaces. All associated activities need to be judged with criteria that assist in building a credible understanding of what is acceptable or not acceptable.

Most regulatory bodies require some form of risk assessment and all follow a similar template:

  • Identify risks to the worker associated with work activity.
  • Identity hazards found in the work environment that pose a threat of loss.
  • Provide details of identified risks or hazards
… Read more...

The Problem is Real: Why Slips, Trips and Falls Continue to Cause Serious Workplace Incidents

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May 1-5, 2023, is the National Safety Stand-Down to Prevent Falls in Construction. This is a voluntary event that encourages employers to stand down from work and discuss workplace hazards relating to trips, falls or other job safety concerns.

In this three-part series dedicated to walking-working surfaces, Scott Gaddis—Vice President, Global Practice Leader, Safety and Health at Intelex Technologies, ULC—provides his expert insight into the risks associated with pedestrian safety in the workplace and what employers need to do to mitigate them.

Pedestrian Safety in the Workplace

Pedestrian safety is not an issue to be overlooked. The Bureau of Labor Statistics says that on average, slips, trips and falls cause nearly 700 fatalities per year. OSHA reports that as many as 30,000 forklift accidents occur in the United States annually and close to 20 percent of those accidents involve a pedestrian being struck by the forklift. Of these forklift … Read more...

Compliance or Risk Auditing: What Is the Best Approach?

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Companies need audit management to understand the safety management system and evaluate compliance with internal requirements and external regulations.

Safety program audit management provides confidence to organizations that operational risks are measured through sufficient identification, control, monitoring and governance. Audits are conducted to better understand the safety management system and evaluate the level of compliance with internal requirements and external regulations. Such audits utilize audit protocols to understand problems to correct any deficiency before a loss or a compliance issue is experienced. 

Safety auditing is conducted usually for the following reasons:

  • Ensuring compliance to the requirements of internal, international, and industry standards & regulations, and customer requirements
  • To determine the effectiveness of the implemented system in meeting specified objectives (safety, quality, environmental, financial)
  • To explore opportunities for improvement
  • To meet statutory and regulatory requirements
  • To provide feedback to senior management

Compliance Versus Risk-Based Audting

There are two main channels of … Read more...

Lucky #7: Tips to Develop a Laser-Focused Safety Vision for 2022

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A great safety process begins with a great safety vision.

When an organization believes in a vision, or in this case – a safety vision – it will elevate individual values to that of the shared vision. What it means to me as a safety professional is that I have a chance to capture an employee all day/every day, at work and at home. It fosters a partnership that extends past the employee-manager relationship and opens the door to new ideas and increases engagement while adding shareholder value.

It also allows me to challenge the organization when decisions are contemplated that threaten the success of the endorsed safety vision. Simply put, a great safety process begins with a great safety vision that is so real you can latch on to it and leverage it for success. It creates energy and a passion for making change happen. It inspires individuals and … Read more...

The Principle-Based Safety Culture

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Creating a workplace that is striving to achieve and sustain safety performance success begins with one critical question: Is safety your organization’s principal value?

Achieving safety and health success is measured in various ways and with an ample set of metrics that quantify and qualify success. However, I would venture a guess that most organizations still look to a specific number of measures to define overall success: Metrics that measure loss, the time between failure, the duration of loss and the severity of the loss.

The reality is, most organizations still want to understand that loss and its severity are improving with time, and that’s okay. Yes, I said it: it’s okay.

Creating a workplace that is striving to achieve and sustain safety performance success begins with one critical question: Is safety a core value or better yet, is it the organization’s principal value? To define it in terms of … Read more...

The 5 Basic Principles of HOP (Human and Organizational Performance)

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Conversation is imperative for HOP and most critical to success. Active listening and learning (worker-to-worker and worker-to-management) is necessary to understand where failure and loss is possible.

Human and Organizational Performance systems, better known as HOP, have garnered much recent discussion and interest by many organizations, who see it as a better approach to improving safety performance. The premise of HOP is the idea that human error is inevitable so perhaps through better process systems management and analysis, organizations might lessen the effect of human error through the promotion of defenses that reduce risk.  

It is with this thinking that organizations can build management system robustness by understanding how workers perform their daily work tasks and then understanding what the gaps or errors are within the management system and close the gaps through what is commonly referred to as defenses. 

Conversation is imperative for HOP and most critical to success. Active listening and learning (worker-to-worker and worker-to-management) is necessary to understand where failure and loss is possible. It requires looking back at past events where loss was experienced, reviewing the present where errors are armed and ready to strike, and it’s an eye into the future to identify certain job tasks that promote the chance … Read more...

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
… Read more...

The Labor of the Safety Professional

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The Triangle Shirtwaist Garment Factory fire killed 146 workers in New York City in 1911 and sparked protest marches across the country as workers demanded safer working conditions.

One of the joys of age is the ability to look back with more experience and, hopefully, more wisdom. I began my career as a safety and health professional in 1989. Worker safety and safe working conditions have been top of mind for me for more than 30 years.

It does not escape me that things have changed a lot in our profession these past three decades and, without a doubt, will rapidly change going forward. Yet, our work is still the same: As safety and health professionals, our core duty is to return people – our colleagues and the workers entrusted to our care – back to their families every day. We do more than that, but if we aren’t protecting … Read more...