Look for the “Believers” to Evangelize Your Safety Culture

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Occupational health and safety, like anything, needs to be imbedded into culture and culture is created by the employees.

Safety cultures should be created by employees for each other – empowered, invested and supported by the company – as opposed to forced down and then begrudgingly adopted or ignored.

That’s the view of Neil Bedwell, a council member of Forbes magazine who heads up a consultancy that focuses on culture called Local Industries, based in Atlanta. Employees represent the most important stakeholders in any workplace initiative, he says. In the context of health and safety, guidelines may be created by a small group of senior people, but it is the employees on the floor who bring these principles to life day-by-day and minute-by-minute.

“Occupational health and safety, like anything, needs to be imbedded into culture and culture is created by the employees,” Bedwell says. “Health and safety … Read more...

EHS Software and Technologies Help Businesses Keep Pace with Transforming Work

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The speed and the pace of work is creating new challenges and opportunities for health and safety in the massive volumes of data that can be captured by EHS management systems and how it can be used to improve performance.

Technology is the driving force behind workplace transformations and will be the engine powering environmental health and safety or EHS management to ensure it keeps pace with the ever-changing and increased speed of work.

An article in the Houston Chronicle (CHRON) reports that technology’s impact on work has exponentially increased the rate of production and speed at which business occurs, adding that, “technology in the workplace has helped workers become more efficient than ever before. What used to take hours now can take minutes.”

The World Economic Forum’s 2020 Global Risks Report says 73 percent of executives predict significant industry disruption in the next three years due to technological changes, … Read more...

Is an EHS Management and Sustainability Approach Right for Your Business?

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Sustainability and EHS software may be just the thing your organization needs to help keep your workers safe and protected.

Keeping workers protected and workplaces safe needs the commitment and involvement of all divisions within a business. It also requires an integrated approach to what might be described as EHS&S or environmental, health and safety (EHS) and sustainability. One that includes:

  • Steps to define and prepare for risk,
  • Aligns a stronger and safer workplace culture,
  • Maps EHS and sustainability goals and objectives, and,
  • Consolidates for consistency across all business segments.

An EHS&S information management system may be just the thing your organization needs, but how would you know? Check out this four-phased approach, below, for answers and guidance.

Phase 1. Step Back and Evaluate Your Needs:

Are you only managing permits and compliance deadlines? If so and your business is small, simpler could be better.

“You can have a process … Read more...

Leaders 2 Leaders The Network: Successful Mobile Rollout 

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The adoption of mobile technology allows Wizz Air to immediately report on and record flight information and incidents, even when employees are off-line.

Akos Steigervald, System Administrator and FDM manager, is the main point of contact at Wizz Air for Intelex Technologies. Wizz Air, with its 6,400+ employees, is a Central-Eastern European airline with its head office in Budapest, Hungary. The airline, which carried 21.7 million customers in 2021, serves many cities across Europe, as well as some destinations in North Africa and the Middle East. 

Steigervald recently shared information about Wizz Air’s successful mobile rollout during a Leaders2Leaders The Network session with other Intelex customers. These sessions feature a series of interactive, customer-led sessions that encourage best practice sharing, networking and collaboration with our Intelex European customers. The sessions – for users by users – offer insight, pro tips and more to help you get the most from our … Read more...

EHS ROI Should Be the Endgame, Rather than the Start of Your Investment Pitch

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The inherent value of occupational health and safety (OHS) for every business and organization makes it seem unimaginable that anyone would argue the importance or necessity of protecting workers on the job. 

So why can it be so difficult to obtain additional and necessary investment to improve safety performance? Perhaps the answer lies in the capitalist axiom that business is business, after all, and any investment made must be measured by a resulting payback.  

When it’s necessary to quantify environmental, health and safety (EHS) investment dollar benefits, return on investment (ROI) comes into play. And, while there are many tools and calculators available to help construct an ROI, before spending the time and effort to build a business case, it’s necessary to understand a couple of fundamental things – namely, for whom ROI is important and whether it is truly how a business thinks about safety.  

Related content: The ROI … Read more...

ISO 45001 and ANSI Z10 Offer Valuable Safety Management Guidance

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Industry standards exist to help set the foundation for a safety management system. For those who may not have a system in place or are looking to take an existing safety management system (SMS) to the next level, standards offer a guiding blueprint for the key and necessary components and practices. Two of the most common and ubiquitous are the International Organization for Standardization’s ISO 45001 and the American National Standards Institute’s ANSI Z10.

ISO 45001 is described as the world’s first international standard for occupational health and safety systems. It provides a framework for improving health and safety performance and is intended to control the factors that may result in injury, illness or death on the job. ISO 45001 is also described as process-based and considers risks and opportunities. The standard explicitly mentions mental health as an element that should be protected by the program.

Another noteworthy feature of … Read more...

The Environment Ranks Highest as an ESG Priority for those Surveyed in Europe

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New research from Intelex of EHS and ESG professionals in Europe finds that more than half of organizations surveyed are prioritizing environmentally focused ESG activities ahead of other ESG-related considerations.
New research from Intelex of EHS and ESG professionals in Europe finds that more than half of organizations surveyed are prioritizing environmentally focused ESG activities ahead of other ESG-related considerations.

Doing good for the planet is emerging as the primary area of environment, social and corporate governance (ESG) focus for those tasked to manage the progress of ESG initiatives in their organizations, according to recent research conducted across Europe by Intelex.

The environmental aspect of ESG consumes more attention than either of social or governance elements, according to a 2022 survey of more than 700 environmental health and safety (EHS) and ESG professionals from 10 European countries, including the UK, Ireland, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, France, Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland.

The third section of the report, Engaging Workers Growing Business and Protecting the Planet, reveals more than half of organizations surveyed are prioritizing environmentally … Read more...

5 Ways EHS Professionals Can Support ESG Initiatives

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As a result of corporate ESG framework requirements, EHS professionals are getting opportunities to be real business partners.

A move by organizations everywhere to adopt environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) criteria could be today’s primary catalyst in transforming the future role of the environment, health and safety (EHS) profession.

ESG issues have taken on an increased sense of urgency for businesses around the world as public opinion becomes sensitive to social and environmental issues. Regulatory changes are expected to set the jumping off point for organizations, and investors and companies will need to have strong frameworks for identifying ESG risks with overall mechanisms and tracking capabilities as part of their management systems.

During an Intelex-sponsored EHS Today webinar in June discussing how safety professionals can support ESG initiatives, Ashley Gill, regional safety manager for Valicor Environmental Services, said there traditionally has been a disconnect between EHS professionals and business … Read more...

Research Reveals Employee Engagement is Key to Both EHS and ESG Performance

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New research from Intelex finds that organizations continue to struggle with improving employee engagement in health and safety programs.

Workplace culture and employee engagement challenges are all too familiar within occupational health and safety. They are also likely to have a major impact on successful environment, social and corporate governance (ESG) performance, according to recent research conducted in Europe by Intelex Technologies LLC.  

The research report, Engaging Workers, Growing Business and Protecting the Planet, observes that improving EHS and ESG performance drives competitive advantage but that getting employees onboard with EHS initiatives may likewise slow ESG progress. 

The report, commissioned by Intelex, surveyed more than 700 EHS and ESG professionals from 10 European countries, including the UK, Ireland, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, France, Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland.  

The first chapter of the report, “Success is about people first and foremost,” focuses on several key research observations, among them: that … Read more...

OHS Research Needs to Focus on Why Incidents Don’t Happen

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Because a workplace injury may not have occurred yet is not an indication of safety or a predictor of future safety.

Traditional lines of questioning in occupational health and safety research may not always get to the heart of the matter when it comes to truly understanding what’s behind keeping workplaces safe.

Safety research and investigations typically focus on the dissection and analysis of incidents that occur, but not enough query may be examining why they don’t. Hazards are not things thrown into worksites, says Ron Gantt, a director and principal consultant for Reflect Consulting Group, a company that specializes in helping organizations improve their safety management.

“Hazards are unintended side effects of work,” he says. “If all we do is focus on the negative and are not understanding how it is all connected to everything else going on in a job site then we may inadvertently not be helping…we … Read more...