EHS on Tap

This week is the EHS Daily Advisor’s Safety Stand Down Week, and you can’t build a better safety program without paying close attention to your organizational safety culture. So for today’s EHS on Tap podcast, we’re chatting with Steve Roberts, PhD, co-founder and senior partner at Safety Performance Solutions and a safety culture and behavioral safety expert who has some best practices to help environment, health, and safety managers boost their organizational cultural efforts and build safer working environments for all employees companywide.

Today is May the Fourth, Star Wars Day, and to celebrate the occasion we're joining forces with fellow Star Wars nerd Jim Davis, host of our sister podcast, HR Works, and editor of the HR Daily Advisor for a couple of episodes focusing on human resources and environment, health, and safety (or, as is often the case, a conspicuous lack thereof) in the Star Wars universe. After you take a listen to this episode, be sure to check out some more Star Wars Day analysis from a human resources perspective over at HR Works.

In conversations about workplace safety and health, too often a certain category of business is left out of the conversation: Nonprofits. Yet these organizations, often heavily staffed by dedicated volunteers, share similar vulnerabilities as any other for-profit organization. On today’s podcast, we’re sitting down with Jack Geissert, the founder and president of Safety for NonProfits (S4NP) who is looking to close this gap. We discuss how he and his organization provide a helping hand to nonprofits with pro bono health and safety services.

There are many health threats facing the workforce today, and we’re not just talking about COVID-19. Ailments like stress, fatigue, obesity, mental health issues, and lung and heart disease, just to name a few, continue to burden the public. These issues don’t just negatively affect workers, but their organizations as well, and the entire working world can benefit from addressing the overall health of our populace both nationwide and worldwide. For World Health Day coming up April 7th, we’re sitting down with two guests from the Total Worker Health Program at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, or NIOSH, a part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and they have some great insight and tips for our audience of EHS professionals looking to help create a healthier workforce. We’re very excited to have on the show Dr. L. Casey Chosewood and Dr. Paula Grubb. Casey is the Director of the Office for Total Worker Health® at NIOSH, and Paula is a Research Psychologist at NIOSH in the Division of Science Integration.

While we are still amid the COVID-19 pandemic, increasing vaccination rates and better workplace safety guidance have led organizations to look ahead to return-to-work scenarios in a post-COVID business world. One EHS-related angle that may be a bit overlooked is your drug and alcohol testing program. Drug and alcohol use has spiked during the pandemic; what does this mean for your safety and testing programs as many of these workers begin transitioning back into the office? On today's episode, we chat with Bill Current, President of Current Consulting Group about some considerations for returning to the office.

Today, March 8, is International Women’s Day, a global event for celebrating the social, economic, cultural, and political achievements of women that also serves as a call to action for accelerating women's equality. To mark the occasion, EHS on Tap is sitting down with four women who have found great success in the EHS field, Adele Abrams, Lindsay Bell, Abby Ferri, and Camille Oakes, each of whom has also been an advisory committee member for the American Society of Safety Professionals’ Women in Safety Excellence (or WISE) common interest group.

It's EHS Leadership Week at the EHS Daily Advisor. For this special leadership-focused episode of EHS on Tap we spoke with Mary J. Stine, the global director of EHS programs for a large multinational corporation about her experiences starting out in EHS, the qualities of an EHS leader, and why it is important for EHS to have a seat at the table.

The world has been offered a glimmer of optimism for the coming year as numerous COVID-19 vaccines have started rolling out in an effort to combat the pandemic. However, environment health and safety professionals have a lot of questions about the vaccine and what their role, if any, should be in organizational vaccination programs. Fortunately, we're joined today by attorney, safety professional, and trainer Adele Abrams who can help shed some light on some of the questions or concerns EHS professionals might have about complying with vaccination protocols.

Diversity and inclusion are hot topics at organizations worldwide, but too often its impact on environment, health, and safety is overlooked. In order to help fill this gap, the EHS Daily Advisor teamed with Avetta to conduct research into diversity and its importance to EHS, from the shop floor to the supply chain. On this episode, we discuss some of the basics about the importance of diversity to EHS with Laurie Knape, an EHS Professional with our research sponsor, Avetta.

In this episode, EHS on Tap is kicking off the EHS Daily Advisor Safety Culture Week with a brand new episode that promises to both inform and entertain. We're very excited to chat with the Safety Justice League, a group of self-proclaimed safety nerds who are constantly on the lookout for safety superheroes. This intrepid league of professionals are speakers, authors, and fellow podcasters, with a combined experience of over a half century in the safety field. And in addition to today's podcast, they will also be joining us for a panel discussion at our next EHS Now event on November 11th.