A professor of safety management at West Virginia University has been named William E. Tarrants Outstanding Safety Educator by the American Society of Safety Engineers (ASSE). Gary Winn, Ph.D., CHST, who teaches in the school’s Department of Industrial and Management Systems Engineering, heads up the school’s safety management master’s degree program and occupational safety and health doctorate.
Millennials have a reputation for not being intensely loyal to their employers and willing to change jobs quickly – but is that reputation deserved? A couple of researchers who are themselves millennials set out to test negative perceptions about workers born between 1981 and 1996 – and some of their results are surprising.
American Society of Safety Engineers (ASSE) members have decided on the organization’s next roster of leaders, whose terms will begin on July 1. At the top of the list: Rixio Medina, CSP, ASP, CPP, who will become ASSE’s new president for 2018-19, replacing current president Jim Smith, M.S., CSP.
Criminal charges have been dropped against Montreal, Maine & Atlantic Railway (MMA), according to Quebec’s Director of Criminal and Penal Prosecutions (DPCP), for causing the deaths of 47 people when 73 cars of highly combustible crude oil derailed in the small Quebec town of Lac-Mégantic in 2013 turning the downtown into a raging inferno.
In our previous two columns on this subject, developing an actionable safety plan is covered in three parts. First Actions was explained in Part One (October 2017 ISHN) and Core Actions detailed in Part Two (January 2018 ISHN). The rest of this column focuses on Sustaining Actions.
Internal audits are a fact of life for many environment, health and safety professionals -- especially those working for large companies. I recently had a discussion with a long-time Phylmar client about internal safety audits. There is a lot of guidance and advice available on how to prepare for such audits and how to create corrective action plans to respond to audit findings.
Recently, I did some health and safety “due diligence” consulting work for a client who wanted to acquire a small, 65-employee business. I thoroughly enjoyed meeting with supervisors and employees and touring the facility and was struck by two important findings: this small company didn’t have much by way of written programs that supported health and safety regulatory compliance AND it had a remarkably good safety record -- one that much larger companies would envy.
Expectations drive both the leader and follower. Various forms of research suggest that when leaders have higher types of expectations for their followers, those followers often live up to the expectations.
We live, we love, we learn, and we leave a legacy.” This profound quotation from Stephen R. Covey has fueled my motivation to keep teaching at Virginia Tech well beyond retirement age and a comfortable pension.
We tend to view our own industry, whatever it is, as unique. We’re prone to see our industry as having characteristics that distinguish it from other industries. I am often told by clients, “this business is unlike any other.”