Author: Dan Nicholls, CSP, SPHR,

In some parts of the country, it still feels like summer. Temperatures are warm, skies are clear, and winter seems far away. But the reality is that winter weather will start impacting other regions long before most people expect. Snow, ice, freezing rain, and cold snaps don’t wait for the calendar — and they certainly…

Most EHS programs fail for the same reason: they’re built in conference rooms instead of built around the work. They become collections of policies, binders, and checklists that look good on paper but never take root in the field. A strong EHS program doesn’t start with documentation — it starts with people, culture, and how…

Every safety professional has heard it:“We need to focus on this hazard,” or “We really need more training on that issue.” And sometimes those instincts are right. But more often than we’d like to admit, they’re based on assumptions, anecdotes, or whatever hazard feels most visible at the moment. The problem is that intuition doesn’t…

Organizations love to talk about safety culture—how essential it is, how much they value it, how it’s “everyone’s responsibility.” But the truth is simpler and far more demanding: safety culture lives or dies by leadership engagement. Not slogans. Not posters. Not compliance checklists. Leadership. A safety culture is like a long, interconnected chain. Every link…

When most people think about workplace fatalities, they picture high‑hazard environments — heavy equipment, working at heights, confined spaces, or industrial machinery. But the data tells a different story. Year after year, the leading cause of work‑related deaths in the United States isn’t what happens inside the facility — it’s what happens on the road.…

Artificial intelligence is showing up everywhere — in our phones, our workflows, our equipment, and increasingly in our safety programs. For Environmental, Health & Safety professionals, AI can feel both exciting and unsettling. On one hand, it promises faster insights, better predictions, and fewer administrative burdens. On the other, it raises a fair question: Will…

As I have written before, safety starts in the boardroom. Management commitment and outward and visible support for safety is vital to establishing a culture of safety. However, the real heartbeat of workplace safety lies with the frontline supervisors. They are the ones standing at the bayonet point, that is why we call it the…

Organizations have made real progress reducing recordable injuries, but one truth keeps resurfacing: lower injury rates don’t always mean safer workplaces. The incidents that change lives forever — Serious Injuries and Fatalities (SIFs) — follow different patterns, different precursors, and demand a different level of attention. When companies shift their focus away from SIF prevention…

In every workplace, people make hundreds of micro‑decisions a day. Most of them happen without much thought — and that’s exactly the problem. Our brains are wired with two operating modes: Fast Brain keeps us moving, but it also creates blind spots. When we rely on instinct in situations that require intention, hazards slip through…

Every year, Safety & Health magazine publishes its “CEOs Who Get It” issue—a spotlight on senior leaders who champion safety in meaningful, visible ways. I’ve read this feature throughout my career, and it has always been a valuable reminder of how powerful executive commitment can be. In many ways, it helped shape my own thinking…