Think Twice Before Hiring A Safety Manager

Things To Consider Before Hiring A Safety Manager

Are you considering hiring an internal environmental, health and safety compliance manager for your company?

If you’ve never done this before, you might want to think twice about the decision and here’s why.

Here are some of the most common challenges facing small companies when trying to recruit and hire an internal safety compliance manager:

Recruiting: During recruiting process, it’s very difficult to properly vet a candidate’s experience & qualifications unless you have lots of experience doing this. Once you post the job, you will be flooded with resumes which include all kinds of credentials, certifications and qualifications that will become very confusing and overwhelming.
Management: It’s very difficult to oversee and manage an EHS manager if senior management doesn’t have expertise in OSHA, EPA and state environmental rules, regulations and requirements. We’ve heard from many companies over the years who hired an EHS manager only to learn too late that the person wasn’t even doing their job, and management had no idea. This normally happens only after a failed OSHA inspection or serious injury.
Limited Knowledge: Most EHS professionals either specialize in health & safety (OSHA) or environmental compliance. Qualified “generalists” who have good experience & education in both disciplines are very rare (and expensive). Even if you’re able to find a good candidate, they’ll still have limitations and so your company will probably still need to seek outside consultants to deal with various issues (especially environmental compliance/air).
High salary: A good OSHA compliance manager in Texas will want $125-150K+ (or more) per year, and a good generalist will want $175K+
Accountability: What’s going to happen if your company fails an OSHA inspection or TCEQ inspection? Are you going to fire your EHS manager and then start the process all over again?

Don’t get me wrong, there are many great and qualified safety professionals out there, but they’re hard to find.

Management Commitment is key to success:

Another major consideration is whether or not your company is actually prepared to fully support your planned safety manager. This is called “management commitment” and it’s absolutely critical to the long term success of any OSHA compliance program.

It’s important to understand that managing safety programs can be disruptive, expensive and inconvenient, however despite these challenges senior leadership must remain committed to safety and push through regardless of these challenges.

Believe me when I tell you that no safety manager, regardless of experience, will stick around for long if the company doesn’t support the process by listening, correcting problems and allowing time for employee safety training.

I’ve interviewed and recruited many safety managers throughout my career, and lack of management commitment is the #1 reason that safety managers quit their jobs!

Closing thoughts:

These are just some of the major considerations, but for a deeper dive into the challenges involved with recruiting and hiring an in-house EHS manager, CHECKOUT THIS BLOG POST. It’s based on my many years of experience recruiting safety and environmental compliance managers.

Our outsourced OSHA compliance service, Assured Compliance, can help solve these problems and at a fraction of the cost of hiring a full time safety manager:

You’ll have access to our entire team who can address virtually any EHS issue. See our Team page here: https://bes-corp.com/contact-us/our-team/
- Between everyone on our team, we can handle virtually any OSHA, EPA or TCEQ compliance requirement.
Our monthly fixed fee cost structure is predictable and a fraction of the cost of hiring a full time EHS manager
Accountability: we will guarantee your company’s OSHA compliance

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By Russell Carr|2024-11-15T13:00:49-05:00January 15th, 2020|Good To Know, Hazardous Waste Management, OSHA Texas Laws & Regulations, Safety Training, Texas Environmental Regulations, Texas Hazardous Materials Regulations, Texas OSHA Compliance|Comments Off

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.