In the office, the professional methods of communication generally are very clear. Pick up the phone, shoot a quick note by email or make a visit to someone's office. However - during holiday season - many employees wonder, "Should I send members of my management team some sort of holiday greeting card? If so, is it appropriate to dash off an email with holiday wishes, or is a traditional paper card the way to go?" According to reference-checking firm Allison & Taylor, it definitely is a good idea to send your boss (and his or her boss) an appropriate holiday greeting. It’s an important way to send the message that you value your relationship with the company, and respect these people as individuals. (Additionally, surveys have shown that they are widely appreciated in the business world as a whole; recipients are more likely to do business with a company or individual that sends holiday greeting cards.)When it comes to e-cards, Allison & Taylor suggests you forgo them for a variety of reasons. Many senior managers are older and may reflect an “old school” mentality. A greeting card sent via electronic means may be regarded by them as inappropriate, perhaps even cavalier. Additionally, such e-cards also tend to lack the personal touch of a card mailed individually to the boss’s door; e-cards and social media holiday greetings often are sent en masse, or – in the case of social media greetings – can be done as spur-of-the-moment responses to a comment seen on Facebook or some similar venue.While sending out holiday cards is almost certainly a good idea, even this generous gesture can backfire if the proper protocols aren't observed. Here are some reasons why a traditional greeting card is a good idea and tips for sending an appropriate card:

In his lively presentation at the Safety Leadership Conference in Atlanta, “Implementing Safety Management Systems,” Jim Howry – who is the associate director of the OSHA Training Institute at Georgia Tech – talked about safety lessons learned from NASCAR... Not exactly your average safety conference topic.Often, said Howry, EHS professionals are told that adopting a safety management system – as opposed to reacting to incidents or injuries which is what many safety programs do – is too expensive. So he used NASCAR to illustrate his point about safety management as opposed to safety programs.When Dale Earnhardt Sr. was killed on the track, it was a wake-up call for NASCAR, according to Howry. In purely practical terms, the face of NASCAR – the man who drew thousands of fans to the track and whose face and number sold the most merchandise – was eliminated by a breakdown in the safety process.NASCAR, like the NFL, doesn’t own the race tracks, doesn’t own the racing teams, doesn’t own the cars. NASCAR does, however, schedule and set the rules for the races. NASCAR demanded that the cars be redesigned so that seats are more centered, the cages surrounding drivers are better reinforced and the harnesses the drivers wear tether their head and neck to the seat. (Earnhardt suffered what amounts to an internal decapitation.) It demanded that tracks have safer barriers to better absorb impact. It required changes to the personal protective equipment worn by drivers. If anyone complained, Howry said, the response essentially was: “Do you want to race or not?”Although complaints were made about the cost to redesign the cars and the tracks, the reality is that NASCAR hasn’t posted a fatality since the changes were made, which is healthy for drivers and good for business. When safety is integrated into the process and is managed as part of the business, it won’t be a drag on production, said Howry.To that point, he mentioned that he says “Safety Third,” not “Safety First,” like so many of us have become accustomed to hearing. “If you ‘prioritize’ safety, it’s never going to bubble to the top,” said Howry. “What’s No. 1 is production. Money. Safety becomes an add-on.”He mentioned speaking to someone about safety at a facility. Howry was told that safety was a priority at the company because “If we have another fatality, it will be the third fatality in our facility in eight years.”Howry said his response was, “Are you telling me safety is No. 1 at your facility??!”He mentioned another phrase we hear frequently in safety: “I want everyone to go home with all their fingers and toes.”“I hate that saying,” admitted Howry. “If that’s all safety is, we would have solved it a long time ago… If you have an injury or illness on your OSHA log, then you had a breakdown in process. When you create a better safety process, your productivity improves,” he added, citing the improved business performance of Alcoa after Chairman Paul O’Neill’s now-famous emphasis on safety.The only way to turn the corner on the 4,000+ fatal workplace injuries we experience every year in the United States is through safety management systems, said Howry.In explaining the difference between safety programs and safety management systems, such as ANSI/AIHA Z10, he noted that safety programs:Focus on compliance.Concentrate on discrete events.Identify hazards.Are reactive in nature.Safety management systems, he said, provide for continuous improvement, recognize safety as a business process and are compatible with ISO 1400 – Environmental Management System. Safety management systems also:Focus on performance.Are proactive in nature.Identify risk.Standardize processes for continuous improvement.Bring programs together.To illustrate his point about safety management systems being important to the bottom line, he showed a chart from OSHA that examined the “real” cost of an accident based on profit margin. If your profit margin is 1 percent and the total cost of the accident is $1,000, then $100,000 in sales will be required to pay for that accident. If that accident cost is $100,000, then $10 million in sales will be required to pay for it.Cost benefit isn’t the only reason to adopt a safety management system, said Howry. Additional benefits include improved morale, increased productivity, a pro-active safety culture, increased workforce confidence and trust and increased compliance.Howry said he had a safety manager once tell him they were working toward a goal of reducing injuries by 50 percent. “They had five injuries, so I said, ‘That’s great. That’s two and a half people who are going to get hurt. We should go tell them so they can be prepared for that.’”

Think of Mercedes-Benz Stadium as a monument to all things football, both American (the Atlanta Falcons, college playoff teams) and European (the Atlanta United). When filled to capacity, the stadium can hold 80,000 screaming fans. From the one-of-a-kind halo board to the open roof to a world-class art collection to the bevy of collectible cars to the management of safety, there's nothing ordinary about Mercedes-Benz stadium. At the height of the round-the-clock construction of the new. $1.6 billion Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta, home to the Atlanta Falcons and the Atlanta United, there were 3,300 construction workers swarming all over the site, with 40 safety coordinators for the different trades holding daily safety and construction coordination meetings to maintain a safe working environment. Safety challenges included moving 27,000 tons of steel into place using 13 cranes, including Big Red, one of the two biggest cranes in the world, capable of lifting 2.5 million pounds at a time. Now that the stadium is built, the safety focus has shifted to safety for the 6,000+ employees and as many as 80,000 fans for a Super Bowl.

Workplace harassment directly is tied to a variety of physical and psychological problems suffered by victims, including higher rates of stress, loss of sleep, depression and symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, according to a study from Ball State University.“Workplace Harassment and Morbidity Among US Adults” also found that victims were more likely to be female, obese, multiracial and those divorced or separated. The report is based on an analysis of 17,500 people who participated in the 2010 National Health Interview.Jagdish Khubchandani, a community health education professor at Ball State and the study’s lead author, said the results clearly shows that the American workers are being exposed to harassment and are their health is suffering. “Harassment or bullying suffered by American employees is severe and extremely costly for employers across the country,” he said.  “Harassment harms victims, witnesses and organizations where such interactions occur.”The humiliation and ridicule of workplace harassment causes victims to have low self-esteem, concentration difficulties, anger, lower life satisfaction, reduced productivity and increased absenteeism, said Khubchandani, who coauthored the study with James Price, a faculty member at the University of Toledo.The study found that over 12-month period:About eight percent of respondents said they were threatened, harassed or bullied in the workplace.Females were more likely to be harassed than males.Individuals reporting higher rates of harassment included hourly workers, state and local government employees, multiple jobholders, night shift employees and those working non-regular schedules. Victims of harassment were more likely to obese and smoke.Female victims reported higher rates of psychosocial distress, smoking and pain disorders like migraine and neck pain.Male victims were more likely to miss more than two weeks of work and suffer from asthma, ulcers and worsening of general health in the past year. In addition, male victims were more likely to have ever been diagnosed with hypertension and angina pectoris.Despite heightened awareness of the problem and an outpouring of support for victims of workplace bullying in the last decade, the study shows that American companies have a long way to go to eradicate such acts, Khubchandani said.“Workplace harassment could be significantly reduced by American organizations if they were willing to accept the prevalence of the problem and acknowledge the high costs for employees and employers,” he said. “Interventions to address workplace harassment should be comprehensive. Practices and policies should protect employees at risk and there should be protocols to assist employees who are victimized.”To protect all employees – not just those at risk – Khubchandani said there should there should be periodic education and reinforcement of policies across the organization.

This ffun visual from GetVoIP depicts some of the most notorious characters we meet at office holiday parties.Whether it's the person who indulges in the open bar a bit too much or the mysterious one you had no idea worked at the company, we all run into one or more of these classic party guests during this time of year.GetVoIP

The Construction Track of the Safety Leadership Conference started out with great news: The findings of the third annual Safety Performance Report of the Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC) indicate that the implementation of six specific leading indicators significantly improved safety performance.Greg Sizemore, vice president of HS&E and workforce development for ABC, noted that the organization has 22,000 members, 18,000 of which are contractors. The association offers a Safety Training Evaluation Process (STEP), a safety benchmarking and improvement tool that the most recent report shows dramatically improves safety performance among construction industry participants regardless of company size or type of work. Companies participating in STEP reported as much as an 87 percent reduction in total recordable injury rates (TRIR).“If I offered you a roadmap to get there, would you be interested?” Sizemore asked. This process gives companies “a methodology to get from Point A to Point B,” he added.He said the STEP program offers participants the opportunity to take an honest look at how they approach safety and culture, affording the opportunity for a paradigm shift, quoting Steven Covey, author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People,” who said: “We see everything through the perspective of our own paradigm.Sizemore admitted he experienced his own paradigm shift when a young employee on a job site where he was working was killed. “Loss of life often leads to a paradigm shift,” Sizemore admitted. “On average, three people are fatally injured [on construction sites] every day, and that’s just not acceptable, What is your safety paradigm? Accidents will happen or incidents are preventable?”How organizations perform in safety often reflects the attitude of corporate leadership, Sizemore noted. He shared this quote from Steve Gruenert and Todd Whitaker: “The culture of any organization is shaped by the worst behavior the leader is willing to tolerate.”When leaders embrace safety, and companies “do these six things and do them well, then [they] will show improvement in safety," he said.Companies that provide more than 215 minutes of new hire orientation show a TRIR rate 1,827 percent lower and a days away restricted or transferred (DART) rate 1,662 percent lower than companies that provided 31 minutes or less of new hire orientation.Companies that offered site-specific orientation had a TRIR rate 180 percent lower and a DART rate 158 percent lower than companies that did not complete site-specific orientation.Companies that offer daily toolbox talks had a TRIR rate 276 percent lower and a DART rate 292 percent lower than companies that offered monthly toolbox talks and a TRIR rate 220 percent lower and a DART rate 233 percent lower than companies that offered weekly toolbox talks.Companies that track near misses have a TRIR rate 169 percent lower and a DART rate 163 percent lower than companies that do not track near misses.Companies that conduct weekly inspections with follow-up have a TRIR rate 239 percent lower and a DART rate 243 percent lower than companies that conduct monthly inspections with no follow-up.Companies that have substance abuse programs have a TRIR rate 156 percent lower and a DART rate 156 percent lower than companies that do not have substance abuse programs.

We take care of what we own. When every employee and every department owns a piece of safety, the culture changes for the better. The purpose of the 2017 Safety Leadership Conference is to guide EHS leaders in their efforts to understand and own their piece of safety, communicate to others about their role in the safety process and improve the safety culture at their facilities.The theme of the 2017 Safety Leadership Conference is “Who Leads Safety?” and it’s being held in Atlanta, Nov. 28-30. The conference includes educational sessions in four tracks (Safety and Risk Management, Compliance, Safety Technology and Construction Safety), keynotes, workshops, tours and networking opportunities that will help these leaders recognize and build a world-class safety culture and become a leader for safety at their companies and in their industry. For the first time, the SLC will feature four keynote addresses:1. Who Owns Safety?Wednesday, Nov. 29th, 8 a.m. – 9:15 a.m.Terry L. Mathis, CEO/Founder, ProAct SafetyTerry L. Mathis is a well-known and respected international consultant, speaker and author. Terry is the founder of ProAct Safety, a 24-year-old international safety and performance consulting firm. He is a veteran of over 1,600 safety, culture and performance improvement projects in 39 countries and 21 languages, and has personally assisted organizations such as Georgia-Pacific, Herman Miller, AstraZeneca, Wrigley, ALCOA, Merck, Rockwell Automation, AMCOL International, Ingersoll-Rand and many others to achieve excellence.He is a regular keynote and breakout speaker at ASSE, NSC and numerous state, company and industry conferences. Terry has co-authored five books on safety and strategy: one with Dr. Dean Spitzer and four with Shawn Galloway. In addition to his books, Terry has authored more than 100 articles in publications including Professional Safety, EHS Today, ISHN, Electrical Engineering Journal, Chemical Engineering Journal and Business Week. He also has authored numerous weekly blogs, video scripts and training modules. EHS Today has listed Terry four consecutive times as one of “The 50 People Who Most Influenced EHS.”Terry’s keynote focuses on “Who Owns Safety?” He notes that it is human nature to take better care of that which we own. Ownership is the main reason people will detail their own car but won’t even run a rental through a free car wash. Ownership is also the reason why some safety efforts are stellar and others are lackluster. Should we create ownership in our safety efforts?  Who should own what? And how do we accomplish this?2. Leading by Example: How an America's Safest Company Helped Employees and its Community Recover from Hurricane HarveyWednesday, Nov.29th, 11:45 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.Jay Bice, HSE Manager, H+M Industrial EPCH+M Industrial EPC’s headquarters is in one of the areas hit by Hurricane Harvey, but that didn’t stop this America’s Safest Company and its employees from reaching out and helping others in other areas of the state. The hurricane and its aftermath required co-workers, neighbors, friends and strangers to all come together to survive the storm and to progress beyond the storm. Many people, including several at H+M, will be dealing with the effects of the storm for months to come. Most will be working at H+M during the day, and working to repair and rebuild their homes after hours.HSE Manager Jay Bice reached out to impacted employees, and with a crew of co-workers, helped them remove storm-damaged property and clean up their homes. In this uplifting keynote address, he will talk about H+M Industrial EPC’s emergency response plan for its facilities, how managers and employees came together to deal with the stress and distraction caused by the hurricane and how employees rallied around to help each other and their communities.3. You Don't Have to Trade Off Safety for ProductionWednesday, Nov. 29th, 3:30 p.m. – 4:30 p.m.Dr. John Carrier, Senior Lecturer, MIT Sloan SchoolThe greatest challenge to developing and sustaining a safety culture is the mindset that in order to achieve a safe working environment, a price in productivity must be paid – in other words, we are trading off a portion of today’s productivity to prevent an infrequent, but catastrophic event. Then, the job becomes optimizing multiple outputs - performance, safety and staff morale – using separate inputs.While this may be true in a theoretical sense, it is patently false in practice. Most systems are running in a condition that is both unproductive and unsafe. However, there are many examples from industrial practice where productivity, safety, and morale simultaneously improved, most notably Alcoa under Paul O’Neill’s leadership and the NUMMI auto facility jointly run by Toyota and GM.As powerful as these examples are, they are generally not sufficient to change operating behavior, because “our system is different.” In this talk, Carrier will discuss a generalized theory that explains how to simultaneously improve productivity, safety and morale through the detection and elimination of hidden factors, which are the hardened aggregates of quick fixes, workarounds and undisciplined work habits that over time form a second system within the workplace that produce poor quality work in an unsafe manner very slowly, while degrading worker skills.The good news is that we can reverse these hidden factors if we know how to detect and then eliminate them. Carrier will show examples from his extensive field work, including offshore blowout preventer maintenance (driven by the Deepwater Horizon tragedy) and his long-running project with the EHS department at MIT. Productivity improvement of up to 30 percent can be achieved while reducing safety incidents by 50-90 percent.Unless you are running a perfect system, there need not be a tradeoff between productivity and safety – unless our own thinking makes it that way.4. Journey to Safety Excellence: Building Safety Leadership CultureThursday, Nov. 30th, 11:45 a.m. – 1 p.m.W.E. Scott PhD, MPH, President, CEO, Global EHSS Leadership Solutions, and Patrick (Pat) Cunningham, MS, Director, Safety & Auditing Services, BrowzThis special keynote addresses how companies can develop and accomplish a culture in which safety is the shared value of every employee. Audience members will learn how to lead and implement a safety culture, involve employees in recognizing and identifying hazards, use measurement tools created for the National Safety Council’s Journey to Safety Excellence initiative to quantify the effectiveness of your safety culture and apply continuous improvement methods to evaluate and improve their safety efforts. Businesses thrive by incorporating safety into the foundation of every strategy, decision, operation and action.Audience takeaways include how companies of all sizes can gain insight on how improve their safety programs and provide host employers with an avenue to direct suppliers who inquire how to improve.Striving for a safe working environment for employees is important, but true cultural change occurs when we realize who should lead safety at our company. For a company to achieve true safety leadership, every employee and department must take ownership of safety.The ability to create a world-class safety culture exists for every business, in every industry: manufacturing, oil and gas, transportation, chemical, construction, retail, food service, agriculture and recycling, to name a few. In these industries, humans interact closely with heavy machinery and hazardous substances, making safety of paramount importance to the wellbeing of employees and the health of the business.That’s why the theme of the 2017 Safety Leadership Conference in Atlanta is “Who Leads Safety?” Is it the C-Suite? Employees? The safety department? Operations? Management? In reality, all of these groups are stakeholders in safety.The expert panelists we’ve lined up for the four tracks of the 2017 Safety Leadership Conference – Safety and Risk Management, Construction Safety, Compliance and Safety Technology – will examine concepts like going beyond compliance to transform the safety culture, using leading indicators and the Industrial Internet of Things to improve worker safety, strategically integrating EHS into the business model, creating ownership in safety, maintaining continuous improvement and achieving true cultural change. 

An explosion ripped through the Verla International Ltd. cosmetics factory in New Windsor, N.Y., around 10:15 a.m. on Nov. 20, injuring approximately 25-30 employees and killing one. Workers fled the building and local emergency responders arrived on scene and were inside the building at 10:40 a.m. when a second explosion occurred, injuring seven firefighters, at least two of whom were transferred to the burn unit at Westchester Medical Center, according to authorities.Firefighters and hazmat teams continued to battle the fire – which was fueled by flammable and combustible chemicals used in the manufacture of perfume, nail polish, lotion and other beauty products – throughout the day and into the night."A deceased male employee was recovered from the plant fire at approximately 7:40 p.m.," Orange County spokesman Justin Rodriguez said in a statement. The worker has not been identified by authorities and the company cannot be reached for comment.The facility has been cited three times by OSHA since 2012:In 2012, Verla was issued six citations, five serious and one classified as “other.” The citations included violations related to general requirements for personal protective equipment, respiratory protection, control of hazardous energy, electrical and wiring and hazard communication. The company was issued $13,600 in fines.In 2013, the company reached an informal settlement with OSHA for two serious, one repeat and one “other” violation. The violations were related to the storage of flammable and combustible liquids, respiratory protection and sanitation. The company was issued $7,700 in fines, which was negotiated down to $5,775.In 2016, Verla International was cited for nine occupational safety violations earlier this year; six classified as serious and three as “other.” The serious violations are related to exit routes, flammable and combustible liquids, eye and face protection, respiratory protection and first aid. The “other” violations are related to PPE, respiratory protection and hazard communication. The company has reached an information settlement with OSHA, negotiating $63,148 in penalties down to $41,046, but the inspection has not been classified as “closed” on the OSHA web site.NY Governor Announces Investigation into ExplosionN.Y. Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo has launched a multi-agency investigation into working conditions at Verla International. The investigation follows the state’s response to the chemical explosion and fire at the company, and will examine worker safety, conditions and compliance with state environmental regulations at the plant. Cuomo has directed the Department of Labor, Department of State and Department of Environmental Conservation to lead this investigation into overall compliance at Verla International.“Ensuring the safety and welfare of New Yorkers in the workplace is critically important, and following today’s chemical explosion, I am directing a multi-agency investigation to get to the bottom of what happened and review compliance with state labor and environmental laws,” Cuomo said. “Worker safety and environmental protection are top priorities and if there was any misconduct or negligence that led to this incident, we will use the full force of the law to hold the company accountable.”The Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) will investigate facility operations, including chemical storage and use practices, to ensure that there are no environmental violations that led to the explosions and fire at the facility. In particular, DEC investigators will inspect the facility to ensure it is in compliance with all applicable state and federal environmental regulations, including hazardous waste management methods of waste collection, storage and disposal; the existence of emergency preparedness plans, response equipment and communication devices; and the proper training of facility staff involved in hazardous waste management. DEC also has deployed air monitoring equipment to evaluate conditions in the area and will continue to monitor water quality impacts from the fire. “DEC takes seriously our responsibility to ensure that all companies are complying with appropriate regulations for chemical and hazardous waste management,” said DEC Commissioner Basil Seggos. “Investigators from DEC will leave no stone unturned to figure out what happened and work to ensure that incidents like this do not occur again.”The Department of State Division of Building Standards and Codes will review code compliance activity at the plant and has offered the town of New Windsor assistance in assessing the overall condition of the building and providing any technical support in determining if code violations contributed to the cause or the spread of the fire.“The Department of State works tirelessly with code enforcement offices throughout the state to make sure buildings are safe for occupancy by residents and workers,” said N.Y. Secretary of State Rossana Rosado. “The Department of State Division of Building Standards and Codes will be assisting town of Windsor officials in determining whether code violations played a part in this tragic incident.” The N.Y. Department of Labor (DOL) will dispatch worker safety and health experts to the facility to determine if any asbestos is present on-site or a malfunction in any of the plant’s three boilers contributed to the incident. Additionally, the department will coordinate with OSHA to interview workers and assist with any OSHA investigation. “Today’s fire in New Windsor underscores the importance of rigorous worker health and safety standards,” said DOL Commissioner Roberta Reardon. “At Gov. Cuomo’s direction, the Department of Labor’s Division of Safety and Health will be dispatching investigators to the site in order to help determine if any negligence on the part of the company played a role in this incident. The department will also be looking closely into any possible asbestos or boiler issues that may have contributed to the severity of the explosion and subsequent fire.”