A business executive once told me that safety is a “necessary evil.” When I asked him to elaborate, it became clear that his view of OSH had been distorted by expensive projects and equipment upgrades at his company, all driven by regulatory compliance concerns. He was skeptical as to whether these compliance improvements would actually improve his organization’s safety performance.

Robert G. Eccles, a professor at the Harvard Business School, presented findings from a study he helped conduct on attributes of high sustainability companies on Wednesday, May 7 at an event sponsored by ASSE – “Occupational Safety & Health in Global Workforce Sustainability.” The half-day meeting was held at the National Press Club in Washington, DC.

It was apparently Blaise Pascal, the French mathematician and philosopher who died in 1662, who first coined the phrase: "I didn't have time to write you a short letter, so I've written you a long one." A version of this line was famously later adopted by Mark Twain, Abraham Lincoln and George Bernhard Shaw.

Sustainability is a very visible topic of educational sessions at ASSE’s Safety 2013. It’s another aspect, as with risk management, of the safety profession broadening its horizons.