Tag Archives: Health and Safety

How EHSQ 4.0 Is Set to Supercharge Your Organization

Posted on by
Reply

When people think of Industry 4.0, they might think of connected factories and smart manufacturing. Yet the methods and tools of Industry 4.0 extend far beyond manufacturing. Soon, every organization will be able to benefit from Industry 4.0 methods and practices as they adopt more flexible and connected networks of people, data, and machines to improve efficiency of assets, quality of products and services, and process flow.

The approach of Industry 4.0 is poised to supercharge the world of EHSQ. For several years, the EHSQ community has been using integrated management systems to consolidate ISO 9001, ISO 14001, and ISO 45001 systems, an approach that ISO has recently made easier with the introduction of the High-Level Structure (HLS). As EHSQ assimilates the tools of Industry 4.0 to become EHSQ 4.0, it will move from being a way to record incidents and track quality events to one of bridging multiple disciplines … Read more...

Engaging your Employees: Four Strategies for Success

Posted on by
Reply

How do you help employees feel accountable in their jobs? How do you create and cultivate a workplace filled with engaged employees? This potentially is the Holy Grail for many organizations, regardless of industry.

Deep and deliberate employee engagement can result in a more focused workforce where the right thing is done even when no one is looking. It’s not hard to imagine how this can translate into a quantifiable ROI for your organization. The key to achieving this level of engagement is motivation.

Motivation is necessary for survival in the most basic sense of the word. We need to be motivated to get out of bed, feed ourselves, shower, go to the doctor, clean the house, celebrate birthdays and all the other seemingly mundane tasks that create meaning in the context of private and public interactions and cultural contracts. This motivation becomes important in the workplace when health, safety, … Read more...

OSHA Forecast Sees Inspections, WV Measures – and Even Drones – On the Rise

Posted on by
Reply

A leadership vacuum, a surprising increase in enforcement activity, and the potential “rise of the drones” all characterize OSHA as it closes the books on 2018 and moves into 2019.

These were some of the observations that representatives of Conn Maciel Carey LLP, a Washington, D.C.-based law firm specializing in occupational health and safety issues, put forth during a recent webinar. Hazards, injuries, prevention measures, preparedness, preventing fatalities and general occupational safety and health reigned top of mind while looking into the coming 2019 year.

In reviewing key OSHA developments in 2018, Eric Conn, Chair of the firm’s OSHA Workplace Safety Practice Group, said the most notable event of 2018 was a non-event – namely, the lack of an appointment of an Assistant Secretary of Labor for OSHA. “We’re nearly two years into the Trump administration and there is still [no one in the role],” he said. “We have … Read more...

Stress-Free Safety and Incident Reporting

Posted on by
Reply

Fulfilling standard compliance and safety incident reporting requirements can be stressful and tedious for anyone, but using generic technology can make the process even worse and the workflow unmanageable. You need to think about regulations, hazards, monitoring change, risk management, complying with jurisdictional requirements, audit … the list goes on. Creating a robust safety culture doesn’t happen without ensuring that you are using an efficient and proactive management system.

Outdated technologies have been inefficiently leveraged to support a paper-based system for reporting injuries and accidents at work. There are simply too many moving pieces and occupational risks that must be taken into consideration to rely on spreadsheets. As organizations grow, processes become more complex and integrated. Antiquated safety management systems are unable to scale and provide your organization with tools for proper reporting workflows and incident management.

What are the dangers of using outdated incident reporting tools?

  • Lack of immediacy
… Read more...

EHS Managers: Come to Our Free “Building the Business Case for EHS Software” Workshop!

Posted on by
Reply

You may have heard of the powerful changes EHS Management software is bringing to all kinds of organizations. You may have heard how it’s saved lives, money and reduced insurance premiums, but some things that don’t get the attention they deserve are process automation, workforce engagement and freedom from disparate data sources, to name a few.

As an EHS professional, you already know the impact this software can have on an organization. But getting alignment and convincing executive decision-makers can be tricky. What else should you include in your business case to fast-track their approval? You’ll find out at our workshop!

Why should I attend?

Coming out to a workshop with like-minded professionals and experts in the EHS space offers you a unique advantage. We partnered with Microsoft and Arcadis to design a workshop that helps you:

  • Gain influencer consensus
  • Circumvent objections with a readiness assessment
  • Leverage compelling data to
… Read more...

Tackling the Evolution of Your EHS Program

Posted on by
Reply

It can be hard to step away from the day-to-day demands of managing an EHS program and take a critical look at what needs to evolve. Often, the people, business and goals of the organization evolve while safety processes remain the same.

Identifying areas for improvement can include leveraging leading and lagging metrics, getting stakeholder and employee feedback, or learning from peers.

Once opportunities for improvement are identified, a structured process to make those changes is required. This will require securing stakeholder improvement for the new ideas, initiatives and tools.

Want to learn more? Access our free webinar to listen to Billy Powell, an EHS Director for Smith & Nephew, talk about the challenges he faces today and how he evolves his EHS processes.

DOWNLOAD NOW Button… Read more...

OSHA: Final Recordkeeping Rule Protects Sensitive Employee Information

Posted on by
Reply

On January 25th 2019 the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) issued a final rule, “Tracking of Workplace Injuries and Illnesses,” in an effort “to protect worker privacy.” The rule eliminates the requirement for establishments with 250 or more employees to electronically submit information from OSHA Form 300 (Log of Work-Related Injuries and Illnesses) and OSHA Form 301 (Injury and Illness Incident Report) to OSHA each year.

In a press release, OSHA notes: “By preventing routine government collection of information that may be quite sensitive, including descriptions of workers’ injuries and body parts affected, OSHA is avoiding the risk that such information might be publicly disclosed under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). This rule will better protect personally identifiable information or data that could be re-identified with a particular worker by removing the requirement for covered employers to submit their information from Forms 300 … Read more...

The Ultimate ISO 45001 Checklist

Posted on by
Reply

Demonstrating performance of environment, health, and safety (EHS) initiatives is a challenge. There are the obvious legal compliance and established safety policy obligations, but to truly optimize an EHS management program, there also must be a management-led culture of a commitment to safety, inclusive and open communication among employees, and demonstrated continuous improvement of risk management. The purpose of ISO 45001, the Occupational Health and Safety Management Standard published by the International Standards Organization (ISO), seeks to provide employers of all sizes worldwide a tool that will enable them to proactively identify and manage EHS risks and specifically evaluate the performance of EHS programs.

Although ISO 45001 is an effective way of enhancing EHS performance, it can be a cumbersome task to fulfill its requirements. This checklist will audit your conformance with the evaluation components in section 9 of the standard. Even if you are not seeking official ISO 45001 … Read more...

Making the Case for Health and Safety with ISO 45001

Posted on by
1

The new ISO 45001 standard for occupational health and safety (OH&S), published in March 2018 by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), specifies requirements for an OH&S management system. It offers guidance to enable organizations to provide safe and healthy workplaces by preventing work-related injury and ill health.

For OH&S leaders looking to drive the adoption of the new standard throughout their workplaces, it is important to understand the goals and motivations of their business leaders. In many organizations, executive-level concerns include:

  • legal
  • social/ethical
  • financial
  • organizational resilience
  • protecting workers from harm
  • financial loss from production, replacing equipment and labour, management time, reputation, orders, worker morale, penalties and insurance premiums.

Traditionally, most OH&S professionals have made the case for improved corporate health and safety conditions to management by using accident data, legal compliance and/or costs of failings. But the movement toward Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is today a more powerful … Read more...

Passing the Test: How Good Is your Safety Management System?

Posted on by
Reply

I talk a lot about management systems and why a good one is imperative to sustainable business success.

A management system, simply put, is the playbook in how an organization manages its moving parts to achieve its goals. The level of simplicity or even the complexity of such a system is entirely dependent on things like organization size, the business functions needing control, the business sector and even legal obligations, just to name a few.

Specific to safety, a Safety Management System (SMS) is a systematic approach to ensuring safety. What it is not is a set of rules based on regulatory standards such as OSHA or the HSE. The SMS is a collection of management elements that are identified and evaluated to develop and execute plans to gain and sustain control within a process framework. While organizations will decide what features the Safety Management System needs to control, the … Read more...