I was going online to publish this week's newsletter when I saw the coolest notice. "Due to dangerous weather conditions, our offices are closed today and we will have limited technical support available. Thank you for understanding."

I was at a trade show last week where if I heard this mantra once, I heard it from different people ten times:  “We’re doing everything we can to take costs out of our business.” There were variations on the theme: “It’s all about cost reduction, baby.” “We’re helping our customers drain costs out of their system.”

Dr. Dan Petersen was one of the great safety pioneers of the last 50 years. His focus was consistently on developing a viable safety culture that lived safety accountabilities at all levels of the organization. Organizations fully utilizing his Six Criteria for Safety Excellence are among the leaders in safety performance. These criteria are:

Today, salary and benefits are not the only drivers of employee satisfaction and engagement. In fact, employees’ indoor environment plays a significant role in fostering productivity, performance and wellness. Similarly, productive classroom environments have a major impact in cultivating effective learning and student achievement.

I’m currently working with an outrage management issue and would to ask you what you would do. The majority of people in a local community I am working with would like us to do a fuel reduction burn to reduce the fuel hazards surrounding their township. There are a small group of “fanatics” that are quite passionate about stopping the burning in this space.

OSHA may be “puny” relative to other government agencies but it is far from puny for its regulated community jurisdiction, particularly, for safety professionals and our employers, when the leadership of OSHA is all about radical left wing political agenda.

Like many other countries, Japan is experiencing an increasingly elderly population and a shortage of care workers. Of course machines have been used for decades in the care of the elderly. Everyone is familiar with hoists, electric beds, wheel chairs and so on, but with computer technology the potential range of activities increases massively.