Not all OSHA investigations should be treated identically. There are many factors that need to be considered in implementing a strategy when OSHA comes knocking. These factors might include whether an injury or fatality triggered the audit, the company's prior citation history, whether the business has multiple facilities and related considerations. Likewise, resolving OSHA citations often requires careful consideration of issues outside of OSHA including but not limited to third party lawsuits, workers' compensation claims, product liability issues, contractual issues on multi-employer worksites. In many cases, these collateral issues have significantly greater liability than the OSHA penalties themselves. In addition, before resolving OSHA citations, a business needs to consider factors other the amount of the penalties. These factors include whether abatement would create operational issues in the future, the likelihood of repeat or willful citations particularly for multi-facility businesses, whether the alleged violation description and the citations could be used as evidence in collateral litigation. This presentation will discuss the many considerations safety professionals and HR should be discussing when handling OSHA investigations and best practices when contesting citations.

Key Takeaways:

• Understanding who should be involved in an OSHA investigation.
• Understanding how OSHA citations and settlements can be used as evidence in collateral litigation.
• Understanding how OSHA settlements and agreed upon abatement can be used to classify additional citations as repeat or willful.
• Understanding how OSHA settlements and abatement could potentially impact operations.

This engaging presentation will analyze the practical aspects of handling office romances, threats by non-worker loved ones of employees, and developing a plan to prevent disputes from such relationships from leading to workplace violence. This session will also evaluate the oft asked question of whether guns at work are a good idea, even when the employer has the best of intentions. After attending this session, you will understand further: 
1.    Best practices on office relationships and anti-fraternization policies
2.    Developing an effective active shooter preparation and defense policy 
3.    Updating the two EAPs- Emergency Action Plans and Employee Assistance Programs
4.    How to Evaluate the Idea of Guns in the Workplace; and 
5.    How office romances can lead to workplace violence situations.  
 

Environment, social and governance (ESG) will continue to grow in importance and be a focus for many companies. As a result, EHS leaders are increasingly involved in developing strategies that support their companies’ sustainability initiatives. This requires a multi-pronged approach involving the collection and analysis of traditional injury and illness data, but also collaboration with other departments within your company, and an understanding of how the EHS function is central to Total Worker Health and your company’s overall ESG mission. Drawing on his work on Goodyear’s corporate initiatives, Jim will show you how to use your data to define a strategy relevant to the EHS function, align your organization to it, and govern its deployment in support of ESG efforts.

Key Takeaways:

• Understand the value of data simplicity.
• Learn about how EHS ties into and supports ESG.
• Leave with a roadmap of how to build ownership of ESG results outside the EHS function.

Industrial workers in the United States are facing unprecedented demand on the clock. Labor shortages, soaring quotas and a crippled supply chain are just some of the factors pushing them to the limits. 

The effects are profound. Not only are preventable workplace injury rates keeping pace, but the mental health toll such essential workers face on a daily basis is revealing itself as well. 

According to our Industrial Athlete Workforce Report — which polled in late 2022 more than 600 active workers across critical industries — more than 47% of respondents report being stressed at their jobs, while nearly 20% said they receive no job training at all.

The positive news is that safety wearables can help identify at-risk individuals and action a plan to help mitigate these factors before they get worse. 

By collecting ergonomic and physiological data from the workers themselves and compiling that data into an intuitive, trend-based dashboard, managers are armed with powerful insights from the source so they can provide insights where they’re needed most. 

Workplace violence has, on average, been the second leading cause of non-roadway fatalities in the U.S. for the past decade (BLS, 2011-2020). Even so, it is often overlooked as a significant workplace hazard. Speaker Kenna Carlsen will first provide an overview of workplace violence trends and explore the situational and systemic risk factors contributing to violence. Next, she will explore the unique overlap between safety and security management as well as the importance of creating synergies between these often-conflicting entities. Finally, attendees will learn about promising safety technologies for violence prevention, along with their specific use cases.

Key Takeaways:

• Learn observable risk factors and existing control measures that can help prevent workplace violence.
• Review existing technologies that, when paired with a strong prevention plan, can aid in the prevention, mitigation, or response to violence.
• Understand barriers to technology implementation and tactics employers can use to build the business case for workplace violence prevention.

Collecting, utilizing, and presenting safety data effectively across your organization can make or break safety culture. If you're getting yawns capturing important information at key moments--you're in trouble.

What if you could easily capture safety data across all activities and safety programs, and use that data to strengthen your safety culture?

A company operating with a strong health and safety culture can:
• Boost staff morale and productivity - a safer workplace, with easy-to-use tools, is a happier workplace. This can lead to improved safety programs.
• Reduce risks, ultimately lessening the likelihood of incidents - less paperwork, fewer staff absences, and less nasty fines!
• Improve efficiency.
• Avoid reputational damage and enjoy lower insurance costs.

Rather than being an expense or burden, collecting, measuring, and presenting health and safety data should be considered an investment, business objective.

Join our live Webinar with EcoOnline’s Principal Product Development Director, Rob Leech. We’ll cover:
1. Why you need safety data: compliance, risk reduction, and insight for improvements
2. How to collect safety data: set up frictionless reporting
3. Get the most out of it: utilize data to prove ROI and uncover areas for operational improvements

Employee engagement is an essential concept for today's companies to be successful, as engaged employees feel linked to the organizational goals, vision and mission. As safety professionals wrestle with the concept of transforming safety cultures and improving safety environments, research significantly supports the ideal of transformational leadership within the safety profession. Transformational leaders continue to impact worker attitudes and outcomes in safety by exhibiting characteristics such as idealized influence, intellectual stimulation, inspirational motivation and individualized consideration. This presentation will discuss the impacts that safety-specific transformational leaders have on engagement levels within the organization. The focus will connect the four attributes of transformational leadership to those of worker engagement. As leaders begin to understand how these two constructs interconnect, safety professionals can begin to create more robust safety cultures within their organizations.

Key Takeaways:

• Gain a better understanding of safety leadership.
• Identify your leadership style and learn how it impacts the organization.
• Understand the relationship between transformational leadership and engagement.
• Implement this newfound knowledge into your daily activities.

The new CHIPS and Science Act is expected to spur multi-million-dollar construction projects not only in chip fabrication location but also in ancillary domestic areas like supplier facilities, technology hubs and supported community infrastructure improvements. With the promise of all this new development comes requirements for enhanced environmental due diligence. This explanatory webinar will cover:

•    Looking beyond “traditional” environmental site assessments to help sellers and buyers alike develop a risk reduction strategy for mergers, acquisitions, and divestitures. 
•    Better identification of “hidden” environmental transactional risks, improved return on investment, and more effective risk mitigation planning & implementation.

The webinar will include a panel discussion between both legal and environmental due diligence subject matter experts to discuss how semiconductor manufacturing companies, their suppliers and other more general project types/locations should use enhanced environmental due diligence to evaluate their future risks as a result of this new legislation.