How to Hire and Retain a Manufacturing Safety Manager

How to Hire a Full Time Safety Manager, If You’ve Never Done It Before

Are you a manufacturer thinking about bringing on your first full-time safety manager? If so, hold on a minute, because finding and retaining a skilled, effective safety manager who will actually perform & deliver ISN’T easy, especially if this is your first try.

The truth is that the odds are frequently and heavily stacked against you.

As the saying goes, “buyer beware,” and that’s especially true when it comes to hiring a safety manager. Don’t get me wrong, the profession is filled with many fantastic, qualified candidates who truly believe in the mission, but it’s also rife with shysters who will bamboozle you with resumes full of safety jargon, certifications and falsehoods, gladly taking your hard-earned money and high salaries while delivering very little in return.

I know, because it’s happened to me, and more than once early in my career when I owned and operated 2 previous companies. But I’ve learned a few things since then.

In this blog post, I’ll draw on my over 21+ years of experience in recruiting, managing, and collaborating with EHS professionals and manufacturers to explore the reasons behind these difficulties and offer essential tips, and some of my own “true stories,” to improve your chances of success.

If you’re thinking about hiring your first safety manager, this detailed guide is your ultimate resource and will help you avoid unnecessary stress, time, and expense. I assure you.

Here’s what we’ll cover.

Why your manufacturing facility urgently needs an effective safety manager
The risks and liabilities you face for failing to get it right
Essential skills, experience, and qualifications for a safety manager
How to review resumes and screen candidates
The pool of available candidates
Other important considerations
How we can help (aka: the blatant sales pitch)

Why Your Manufacturing Facility Requires a Top-Notch Safety Manager

In the manufacturing sector, your workplace and operations pose numerous significant environmental, health, and safety risk and compliance challenges that require your diligent attention. These challenges include severe hazards that can lead to major injuries or even fatalities for your employees, and depending on your processes, equally serious risks to the surrounding community and environment.

Due to these dangers, governmental agencies like OSHA, TCEQ, and EPA have established a comprehensive and ever-changing set of regulatory requirements that your company must adhere to, or face severe consequences.

Given the high stakes, it’s essential to take this responsibility seriously, proceed carefully and resource accordingly.

Risks & Liabilities Your Company Faces for Failing to Get It Right:

Below is a brief summary of the major risks and liabilities your company faces if regulatory compliance is not effectively managed:

Severe employee injuries or even deaths
Environmental harm and pollution
OSHA fines and penalties: Comprehensive inspections of manufacturers typically result in fines ranging from $35,000 to $95,000, but they can often exceed $100,000
TCEQ and EPA can impose fines of up to $25,000 per day
Personal injury lawsuits, which can lead to settlements reaching into the $millions of dollars
Possible criminal charges for company leadership if negligence leads to injury, death, or environmental harm

These risks are too significant to overlook and your best defense is a fully compliant environmental, health, and safety program!

(True Stories: “Many manufacturers make the mistake of believing that these things could never happen at their facility, especially when it comes to serious injuries or fatalities. But it does, every singe day to small manufacturers across the country. I’ve seen every one of these scenarios play out over and over throughout my career. And if it happens to you, and you don’t have a compliant EHS program, you’ll be totally exposed and without defense.”)

To the point, let’s dive into the needs and challenges involved with finding the right person(s) to make it all happen.

Essential Skills, Experience, and Credentials for a Manufacturing Safety Manager:

As previously noted, a typical manufacturing facility creates a long and ever changing list of environmental, health, and safety regulations that must be carefully managed. Consequently, it’s crucial to identify an individual(s) who possesses the requisite knowledge, experience, and approach to effectively oversee these responsibilities.

What follows is a comprehensive review of what to look for:

“Hard” Technical Skills, Education and Experience:

Let’s start by summarizing the regulatory agencies and laws you’re obligated to manage, so you’ll begin to understand what’ll be required of your safety manager:

Occupational Health and Safety Compliance: OSHA, the Federal agency responsible for setting and enforcing health and safety laws, is dedicated to protecting employees from hazardous and potentially lethal manufacturing conditions. Their regulations mandate the development of written programs, policies, procedures, assessments, testing and training, all of which must be tailored to the specific needs and hazards of your company. And once the initial “program” is developed, it must transition into a phase of sustained maintenance and management which literally lasts forever.
Environmental and Hazardous Materials: The EPA, the Federal Agency dedicated to creating and enforcing environmental regulations, was created in large part to help safeguard local communities and the environment from industrial related harm. Each state is responsible for managing and enforcing these Federal regulations locally. For instance, in Texas, the TCEQ (Texas Commission on Environmental Quality) takes on this role.

These environmental agencies have established extensive regulatory requirements for manufacturers, including hazardous waste, stormwater management, air emissions, hazardous materials, and much more.

To truly grasp the situation, it’s essential to recognize that simply hiring a “Safety Manager” won’t be nearly enough. What you actually need is a highly experienced Environmental, Health, and Safety Manager (EHS Manager) to competently oversee these diverse regulations.

(True Stories: “In my experience, most manufacturers fail to even recognize their environmental and hazardous materials regulatory obligations. And that’s because most only think about safety, and never get around to considering EPA and TCEQ until they get inspected, have a spill or some other pollution event happens. Then they turn to their safety manager (assuming they have one), and tap them with the responsibility, yet that person rarely, if ever, has the knowledge and experience needed to make it happen.”)

Essential Non-Technical (“Soft”) Abilities and Experience:

Managing this extensive list of regulations requires more than just candidates with the right technical know-how and experience. Success in this role also hinges on a crucial set of rare interpersonal skills, including the following:

These include professionalism, patience, resilience, persistence, strong communication abilities, adaptability, and more. In sum, a high level of emotional intelligence and the right mindset are vital.

They must also effectively communicate and relate to all levels of an organization, from company leadership to front-line employees.

It’s also important to understand that In the EHS field, there are generally two types of approaches: those who take an authoritarian approach (aka “the hammer”) and those who use a motivational and educational strategy (aka “the carrot”). As you might expect, the “hammer” method is ineffective, yet it remains challenging to find candidates who can truly excel with the “carrot.”

Other Considerations:

I also recommend finding candidates with manufacturing experience due to the unique hazards and regulatory requirements that apply. For example, construction and oil & gas EHS experience rarely translate well because those working environments are totally different, not to mention the safety cultural differences prevalent in these industries.

I used to strongly recommend finding candidates with a 4 year degree from an accredited brick and mortar universities, in Environmental Sciences or Occupational Health & Safety, but let’s just say that my opinions on the importance of formal education for this role are evolving.

In summary, when you look at the extensive range of technical and interpersonal abilities, and industry specific experience, needed to successfully handle a manufacturers’ environmental, health, and safety responsibilities, it becomes clear that the ideal candidate is exceptionally rare.

How to review resumes and screen candidates

Having spent over two decades recruiting and hiring EHS Managers, I can tell you that one of the most daunting aspects of this job is sifting through the extensive list of applicants that flood in once a position is advertised online.

Here’s a brief overview of what this process looks like and what you can expect:

Initially, you will be inundated with tens or even hundreds of resumes, each boasting a variety of certifications, trainings, and regulatory experience. Here’s a quick and dizzy sampling of what you’ll encounter in these resumes:

CIH
CSP
CHMM
501
511
ASP
CHST
Hazwoper
RCRA
Tier II
SPCC
SWPPP
EPCRA
1926
1910
1904
LOTO
Hazcom
Title V
NSR
PBR

If you’re not familiar with these terms, it can quickly become overwhelming.

It’s essential to grasp this specialized terminology and carefully assess the relevant experience and skills presented, so you can quickly “separate the wheat from the chaff.” (easier said than done, eh?).

(True Stories: NEVER make hiring decisions based solely on resumes; this is a recipe for disaster. On several occasions, I was bamboozled early in my career by resumes filled with all the flashy technical terms & certifications, fooling me into believing that “they must be great candidates.” This almost always resulted in poor hiring decisions.)

Once you’ve narrowed down the pool to a more manageable list of candidates, it’s time to conduct deep dive technical evaluations to determine who is genuinely qualified (and who is not). Over the years, I have developed a comprehensive and effective method for this stage, although we don’t have time to cover that here.

(True Story: “As part of our standard recruiting & vetting process, we put all of our EHS candidates, regardless of experience level, through a “first stage,” basic regulatory knowledge evaluation which lasts 30-45 minutes. 90%+ of candidates fail this evaluation, even those with MANY years of experience.

To emphasize the point: On several occasions, I’ve personally recruited what appeared to be “unicorn,” very senior, candidates to join our company. Once we got passed the initial interview steps, I initially hesitated to give them this same, basic technical evaluation for fear of upsetting or embarrassing them, especially after I had contacted them first. But I worked up the courage and did it anyway with shocking results. The majority completely failed the evaluation. Apparently during their careers, they had become so removed from the critical “front line/shop floor” compliance activities, that they totally forgot (or never bothered to learn) the fundamentals. It’s a stark reminder that you can NEVER assume anything, even when it comes to very “seasoned” candidates.”)

For those candidates who pass the initial technical scrutiny, I move on to in-depth interviews designed to assess the “soft” skills I mentioned earlier, as well as alignment with our company values and culture. We have created a very detailed “job scorecard” which clearly define the personal attributes, attitudes and approaches that we’re looking for.

Our vetting process is rigorous and normally lasts two months, and always involves input from my team, including conducting live and extensive hazard identification and training evaluations. We never take shortcuts, and sometimes, we conclude the process without extending any job offers. That’s how committed we are to our process and standards. And you should be too.

The Candidate “Pool”

Just like any other highly skilled professional position, only a very small pool of qualified candidates are going to be available and interested in applying for your position at the same time that you’re recruiting.

But unfortunately, there will be many other less desirable candidates who will.

Having said that, here’s a breakdown of what you’ll typically get in response to a job posting:

The “road warrior”: There’s a huge population of safety professionals who make a great living traveling from project to project across the country or the world, all the while collecting significant over-time pay and per diem. The problem is, they’re rarely qualified to meet your needs but still expect the same $200K+ compensation they receive while working “on the road,” even though they won’t be traveling if working for you. Avoid these candidates at all costs.
The “safety technician or coordinator”: These candidates normally excel at “front line” safety tasks, such as conducting inspections, enforcing safety rules and maybe training, however rarely lack the in depth technical knowledge and “soft skills” that I described earlier. Don’t get me wrong, they perform vital safety functions in the right working environment and under proper supervision, but they’re rarely qualified to meet a manufacturer’s wide ranging needs. The other challenge is that they often expect far more compensation than value presented.
Oil & gas and construction candidates: As I eluded to earlier, the skillset for these candidates rarely translate well into a manufacturing environment, due to the differing regulations, work environments and significant industry safety culture differences. Of course there are exceptions, but they’re rare and like the others, these candidates almost always demand unreasonably high compensation.
The “ivory tower EHS director”: At first glance, these candidates appear to be the magic unicorn you’ve been looking for. They have a strong educational background, many years of manufacturing experience, combined with all of the certifications you could ever ask for. But dig deeper, or make the hire, and you’ll often find that they prefer to work far from the shop floor, sitting in front of a computer, preferably remotely, managing the safety technician(s) that they’ll surely advise you to hire, after you’ve hired them. In other words, they normally want no part of the hard “boots on the ground” compliance work that your manufacturing facility demands. Oh, and they’ll expect a $250K+ salary for their efforts. Again, no disrespect to these professionals because there are exceptions, and they often fit well working for the right BIG company, but are rarely a good fit for a small or even medium sized manufacturing business.

(True Story: “I once actively contacted and recruited a very senior “unicorn” director candidate who worked for a major manufacturer who’s name everyone would recognize. He ended up turning me down, but within a year, ended up taking a position with one of our clients. I assumed that the client would end our contract due to this hire, but here’s what actually happened: during my first call with this person, rather than fire us, he let me know that he planned on requesting a “$150,000 PO” so that we could perform all of the heavy lifting involved with building the client’s EHS program. Obviously I liked the idea, but at the same time wondered to myself, “what did they hire you for?” In other words, he had no interest or intention of doing this hard “boots on the ground” compliance work, and instead wanted to hire us. As you might expect, he didn’t last long with our client and was soon replaced.”)

The “newby”: As the name suggests, these candidates have limited experience, say 1-3 years, and normally either in safety or environmental (but almost never both). These can actually be great candidates, but only with proper guidance and support. But obviously most small manufacturers can’t offer that support, making these candidates unviable. Of course you can choose to roll the dice with such a candidate, normally due to the low compensation ask, but it’s probably going to end in failure.
The “ideal” candidate: Occasionally (and I do mean “occasionally”) you’ll get a great submission from someone with 5-10 years of relevant experience, combined with a 4 year, or graduate degree in EHS from an accredited college, and a reasonable compensation ask. If you do, give them special attention and consideration, because they’re going to be your best bet. Again, they’ll probably only have safety or environmental experience, but with good leadership and a willingness to invest in training, along with some patience, these candidate can really blossom (assuming they have the right “soft” skills that I described earlier). The challenge is that you’ll have to sustain your commitment and can’t just trust that they’ll make it on their own. Maybe they will, but maybe they won’t, so you’ll have to tread carefully.

To summarize, the number of qualified and willing candidates will always be quite small, significantly reducing your likelihood of success. Should you decide to settle, the most you can expect is a fragmented EHS program, which, as I’ve already mentioned, won’t cut it.

Other Important Considerations

For a moment, let’s look beyond these recruiting difficulties, and discuss a couple of other major challenges that you might not have considered assuming you succeed in hiring an EHS Manager.

Oversight & Accountability

Let me begin by asking a very important question: if you lack understanding of what it takes to build and manage a manufacturing environmental, health and safety program, with all of it’s intricate details and minutia, (which you probably do), how exactly are you going to oversee your new EHS Manager to ensure that they’re actually performing?

Most small manufacturers take the “hire and pray” approach, blindly hoping and trusting that things will get done. This is not a good approach considering the potential consequences, and it usually fails.

I’ve spoken to, and we’ve been hired, by many manufacturers who tried this approach only to get blind-sided by a failed OSHA investigation, serious injury or some other calamity. In these cases, the explanation was always some variation of, “we hired and trusted them to get the job done, but they let us down.”

This unfortunate situation is often followed by yet another difficult challenge: having to make a decision as to whether to “forgive and forget,” or fire the person and start the whole process all over again…..

“Management Commitment”

Recruiting, vetting, and hiring an EHS Manager is undeniably tough, but the real challenge starts once you’ve succeeded in bringing someone on board.

In my view, overseeing, guiding, supporting, and ultimately retaining an EHS Manager is perhaps one of the most complex and difficult responsibilities within any manufacturing organization.

Let me explain:

The underlying key to success in this endeavor is what is commonly referred to as “management commitment.” In order to explain what this concept means, let’s begin by acknowledging the fact that managing EHS compliance isn’t easy. And that’s because EHS management is expensive, disruptive and often conflicts with production, and therefore, the company’s bottom-line.

For example, you have to pull employees off the production line to get trained, invest in corrective actions to address hazardous conditions on the shop-floor, pay for environmental permits and equipment, purchase expensive PPE, conduct annual hearing and respiratory testing for employees, staff a safety committee and maintain regular meetings, halt production for accident investigations, and the list goes on and on and on….

But despite these never-ending challenges, company leadership must maintain UNWAIVERING “top down” support, not only for their environmental, health and safety program itself, but also for the EHS Manager’s efforts to maintain it.

In other words, the moment leadership stops listening to the EHS manager, refuses to fix safety hazards, allows safety training sessions to get bumped, etc., the cracks start to show, and before you know it, your new EHS Manager will be gone and out the door.

Without question, the number 1 reason EHS professionals leave a company is due to a lack of management commitment. (At least for good, quality EHS Managers)

Please stop for a moment and give this some serious consideration, because if you don’t understand this concept and absolutely commit to it, then you’ll never succeed in retaining an EHS Manager, let alone building and maintaining an effective environmental, health and safety program.

In other words if you fail with “management commitment,” it’ll be a never ending carousel of EHS Manager turnover, and all the while your risks will skyrocket until some day something really bad happens.

Not only that, but word will eventually spread and pretty soon, no reputable EHS professional will even consider employment with your company.

So let me ask, are you prepared to be “all-in” on safety?

How We Can Help (aka: our blatant sales pitch):

To summarize, and as I stated at the start, recruiting, hiring and retaining an environmental, health and safety manager is much easier said than done, especially for manufacturers who have never done it before.

But as daunting and demanding as this endeavor may seem, there is indeed a path forward that most likely leads to success if you’re open to following it.

Before getting started, let me go ahead and warn you that on the surface it may seem self-serving, and in some ways, it is, but it’s also much better than taking a big gamble (especially given what’s at stake).

Let’s dive in:

We offer a service called FACTORY-Safe, where we essentially become the environmental, health, and safety manager or department (if we assign multiple experts) for our clients, and we can even include hazardous waste disposal. We excel at developing manufacturing EHS programs from the ground up, in the most efficient and cost-effective manner possible. Even better, we’ll actually GUARANTEE your company’s full compliance and provide everything I’ve described at a fraction of the cost of hiring a full-time EHS Manager.

Knowing that we have a tried-and-true, vetted, and predictable process that eliminates all guesswork, uncertainty, and stress for our clients, why not consider a partnership where we step in for the first year to build your fully compliant and guaranteed EHS program that you can rely on to deliver results?

At the end of the first year, we can huddle and decide if it’s worth continuing our partnership, or if your needs necessitate hiring a full-time resource. If so, we’re more than happy to hand over the reins so they can confidently steer the program moving forward. This person could be someone you recruit, or we offer a program where we train and mentor someone from your own team who you believe has “the right stuff” to become your new EHS Manager.

We can also continue to support your company by conducting periodic audits, training sessions or anything else that you might need.

This approach removes all the risk, concludes with a fully compliant and guaranteed EHS program, and does so for a fraction of the cost of a full-time EHS Manager. Plus, it gives you the flexibility to decide what’s best after the first year. Not a bad idea when you consider the big picture.

Thanks for reading, and I hope it helped.

If you’re interested in learning more about how we can help,

click below to schedule your free, no-obligation Safety Strategy Call today.

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By Russell Carr|2024-11-21T14:33:54-05:00November 21st, 2024|Good To Know, OSHA Health & Safety, OSHA Texas Laws & Regulations, Safety Training, Texas OSHA Compliance|0 Comments

About the Author: Russell Carr

How A Sales Guy Transformed Into An Environmental, Health & Safety Expert & Advocate For Small Businesses I've spent my entire 30+ year career working within the manufacturing and “industrial services” sectors. The first 15 years of my career focused on sales of hazardous materials related products and services to the manufacturing sector, then for the last 16+ years transitioned into entrepreneurship, founding 3 small industrial services related contracting businesses. As you’ll see below, running these companies eventually lead me to found yet a 4th business, but more on that in a minute…. Here’s a brief description of the first 3 companies: Berg Environmental Services, Inc.: hazardous waste disposal & transportation services, founded in August of 2003 3rd party wind energy operations & maintenance services provider to utility scale wind farms throughout the US, founded in September 2007 3rd party oil & gas exploration & production services provider, founded in August of 2011 Each of these companies operated in extremely dangerous working conditions and exposed my employees to a wide range of serious health & safety hazards on a daily basis. To complicate matters, 2 of the companies also exposed the environment to significant potential harm. In other words, I learned very early the critical importance of managing environmental, health and safety issues so as to ensure the safety of our employees and the environment, as well as minimizing related risks. But I also learned how incredibly difficult and challenging this endeavor can be due to the wide range of complicated and continually changing environmental, health and safety rules and regulations that impacted the companies. To summarize the challenges: First I had to determine which regulations applied to each company, then I had to build compliance programs to meet those regulations, and finally I had to ensure that the programs were being managed and followed by our staff on a daily basis. All while trying to run and grow 3 profitable businesses…. It was overwhelming and I always struggled to keep up. To make matters worse, throughout this time I also witnessed the devastating price that companies, management and ownership can pay for failing to manage EHS compliance. This included seeing one of my hazardous waste management clients get sent to jail over environmental issues, another client’s management team threatened with jail time, a direct competitor get fined $378,000 by OSHA fine after an employee was nearly killed, and many others face major fines and penalties. Full disclosure, one of my companies got fined by OSHA at one point, & another was cited by TCEQ, so I know how it feels. In summary, I learned first hand how incredibly difficult it is for small companies to manage EHS compliance due to a common lack of the critical expertise, time and resources that are needed to keep up, and how this situation then ends up exposing them to these potentially catastrophic risks that can literally destroy lives and businesses. This later inspired me to found my 4th company, Berg Compliance Solutions in 2012, which is dedicated to helping other small businesses, and business owners, to manage EHS compliance and risk. Education BA, Philosophy, University of Colorado, Boulder, December, 1990. Summary of Professional Experience & Qualifications: 30+ years serving the manufacturing & industrial services sectors 30+ years of sales and marketing experience 16+ years as small business owner & entrepreneur: Founded and operated 4 small businesses since 2003. Environmental, Health & Safety Compliance & Program Related: 19 plus years of hazardous waste management including EPA, TCEQ & RCRA regulations 8 years of DOT/FMCSA compliance experience, including hazardous materials transportation 8 years of combined experience implementing and managing OSHA health and safety compliance programs for 2 high risk energy services businesses Successfully implemented and gained ISO 9001 Quality Management Certification and OHSAS 18001 (Occupational Health & Safety Advisory Service) Certification for wind energy maintenance business. Regulatory Enforcement Related Experience: Served as expert witness in criminal environmental compliance enforcement cases Superfund-CERCLA OSHA enforcement inspections, investigations and resolution in following industries: industrial services, manufacturing & construction. TCEQ enforcement inspections, investigations and resolution in manufacturing.