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 $85-100K+ per year, and a good generalist will want $150K+
  • 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

To Learn More About Our Turn-Key

Outsourced EHS Compliance Services

Call 512-457-0374 or Click Here

To schedule a free consultation