Throughout the process of trying to deal with these challenges, I ended up making just about all of the mistakes that a company can make while trying to deal with EHS compliance. I later learned that many, if not all of these mistakes, are very common with small, and even larger companies, while trying to manage EHS compliance.

Here is a summary of my mistakes:

• Tasking My Staff Managers with EHS Compliance
• Trying to Outsource OSHA Compliance To My Insurance/Workers Compensation Carrier
• Buying a Generic Health & Safety Manual
• Using Generic Online Safety Training
• Failure To Conduct Routine Inspections
• Hiring a Safety Manager & Trusting/Assuming That Everything Was Handled

If you’re interested to learn more about these mistakes and why these strategies don’t work, then read on…

Tasking a staff manager with EHS compliance

During the early stages of all 3 companies, I made the mistake of trying to dual task my operations & HR managers with EHS compliance. This strategy never worked, for 2 very simple reasons: 1) Just like me, my managers had no real understanding of, or experience managing these regulations and 2) even if they did, they never had time to get around to dealing with it due to their primary responsibilities with the companies. Throughout the years since, I’ve seen this mistake made over and over again with companies who we’ve worked with.

Trying to outsource OSHA compliance to my Insurance/Workers Compensation carrier

I’ll never forget when I got the call from our WC provider, telling me that they wanted to setup a meeting with 2 of their “loss control” agents to learn more about our company and discuss how they could help my wind company manage safety. At the time, I was very hopeful that this was the answer to all of my OSHA compliance problems and looked forward to the meeting.

Here’s a quick summary of how that meeting went:

The 2 agents showed up at our office and began asking general questions about the company and our operations. I did my best to answer their questions, but quickly suggested that the best way for them to learn about our operations, was to go out and visit our teams in the field while they worked. They assured me that this wasn’t necessary, nor did they have the time. This was my first hint that they weren’t going to be part of my solution. Instead, they pulled out their laptop computers and directed me to their online safety resources page, which was free since I was a policy holder. They gave me a quick tour of the generic templates and training videos, and within an hour the entire meeting was over.

I’ll never forget how at the time, I actually believed that the online safety resources might be the answer to my problems. That meeting ended up being the first and last time I logged onto their resources website, and the last time I ever heard from the loss control agents. What a major disappointment!

Why this strategy doesn’t work:

• OSHA mandates that impacted employers assess their operations to identify all of the health and safety hazards that exist in their work environment, and then develop a company specific (ie: customized) health and safety manual to include all applicable OSHA standards to address and control each of the identified health and safety hazards.Generic safety manuals almost always contain standards that have no applicability to any given company. This not only means that they can’t meet the “customized” requirement described above, but also means that the company is agreeing to manage all of the additional standards that don’t even apply to the company.
• Just having a health and safety manual doesn’t meet OSHA standards. OSHA mandates that employers implement and actively manage all of the aspects included in the standards. This includes things like conducting routine inspections, developing and delivering employee training, conducting testing, creating company specific procedures, etc.Many companies make the mistake of buying a manual and then putting it “on the shelf,” never getting around to actually implementing and managing these extensive compliance components.

Using Generic Online Safety Training

Given the fact that our wind energy and oilfield service employees were scattered all over Texas and the country, we were forced to buy and utilize generic online safety training resources.

Why this doesn’t work:

• Similar to OSHA’s requirement for customized health and safety manuals described above, OSHA also mandates that employers customize their employee training to address the specific health and safety hazards that exist at the company.Generic safety training can only cover the basics of each OSHA standard, but not the company specific aspects.
• Related to the above requirement, employers must deliver the specific OSHA standard training topics which apply to their company, however company’s who use generic online training have no idea which topics apply. (I actually did, but many companies do not!)
• OSHA also mandates that employees are able to fully comprehend the health and safety training that a company delivers, which typically means that employees must be able to ask questions and receive accurate answers. Generic online safety training obviously can’t provide this aspect.

Another related mistake I made, and routinely see, was delivering training by having employees read our procedures on their own, and then sign off on the document. This “training” method violates OSHA standards the same way as using generic content.

Failure To Conduct Routine Inspections

OSHA has a very clear requirement that employers conduct routine inspections to identify, and then correct health and safety hazards that exist in their workplace. Truth be told, we rarely conducted workplace safety inspections and it was for the same reasons that most companies fail to do it:

Hiring a safety manager and assuming that everything was being
taken care of

This probably sounds counter intuitive, but hiring EHS managers, and assuming that everything was being taken of, actually turned out to be yet another mistake I made while trying to manage compliance. I’ve written extensively about this issue in the past, but here’s a quick summary of why this strategy didn’t work for me, and why it often fails for other small companies:

• It’s very difficult to find experienced, qualified and committed EHS managers. This is true of many manager positions, but is particularly true when it comes to managing environmental, health and safety.
• It’s very difficult for small businesses and owners to properly vet and recruit EHS managers. When I posted our positions, I was immediately flooded with piles of resumes, each of which contained long lists of qualifications and certifications like CSP, OSHT, CHHM, CIH, Hazwoper Certified, OSHA 10, OSHA 30, etc, etc.In other words, if you don’t know what any of this means, and you don’t know how to confirm and ask the right questions, then you’re bound to fail at vetting candidates. I fell victim to this many times which meant that I often hired unqualified candidates.
• It’s very difficult for small companies to manage and supervise EHS managers. In other words, if you don’t understand the regulations and how to manage them to begin with, how are you supposed to supervise and hold your internal EHS manager accountable? Again, I fell victim to this issue. I made the mistake of hiring what I thought and hoped were qualified EHS managers, and then trusted that they were getting everything done, with no way of really verifying any of it.
• Managing EHS compliance is a very difficult process and responsibility, and even the best and most qualified professionals can struggle to make it happen.There are many reasons why this is true, but I’ve found that the most common reason is the simple fact that most EHS managers tend to focus on one or more aspects of compliance, rather than ALL aspects, due to their personalities and work habits.Some like to focus on “field work” meaning that they enjoy doing inspections and interacting with workers, while others like to focus on administrative tasks and therefore tend to spend more time in front of the computers, while others lack the personality to be able to amicably enforce rules with workers and/or deal with management, especially when it comes to dealing with cost and production conflicts.

  In other words, it’s very difficult to find that well-rounded EHS professional who can effectively and consistently manage all aspects of compliance.

In summary, I often found out after the fact that my EHS managers simply weren’t doing their jobs and therefore put my employees and companies at serious risk. In one situation, my wind business was inspected and fined by OSHA, and in another, I discovered that one of our trucks was seriously out of DOT compliance. Had my EHS managers been doing their jobs, both of these failures would have easily been avoided. There were many more failures, but these were two of the worst instances.

I later discovered that just about all small companies make one or more of the same mistakes I made when trying to manage EHS compliance.

These mistakes often lead to a false sense of security where the company and management believe that they’re in compliance, when in reality they’re not, which can end up leading to major risks and liabilities.

I took stock of my mistakes made and lessons learned & used them to help build a new EHS consulting company with a singular mission which is to help small companies manage OSHA, EPA, TCEQ & other state environmental regulations and related risk.

Berg Compliance Solutions – EHS Compliance For Small Business