Survey reveals top EH&S challenges

Developing and maintaining environmental health and safety (EH&S) programs, keeping up with regulatory changes, and training and evaluating workers were the top three challenges faced by safety professionals who responded to an EH&S benchmark study conducted by J. J. Keller & Associates in late 2024. The study aimed at understanding the state of the industry and the challenges faced by EH&S professionals.

What can safety professionals do to alleviate these challenges?

Developing and maintaining EH&S programs

Written safety plans (or programs) are records of how an establishment is protecting or plans to protect employees overall for a safety or health hazard. Writing an effective safety and health plan helps keep your training program organized and shows a good faith effort to comply with the regulations. Written safety plan requirements are found throughout 29 CFR 1910 for general industry and 29 CFR 1926 for construction. Most regulations have a scope and applicability section(s), so if you find that the regulation applies to your situation, check if there’s a written plan requirement within it.

Be sure to review your written plans when there are changes to work processes or procedures, and at least annually to ensure they’re working the way you intend. Your plan may look great on paper but if it’s not being put into practice, this is a compliance trouble spot!

Keeping up with regulatory changes

Although OSHA’s regulations generally move slowly through the pipeline, state-plan states tend to see more frequent regulatory activity, particularly California, Washington, and Oregon. Environmental regulations are much more active, particularly at the state and local levels. Ideas for keeping on top of changes include:

• Visiting state and federal regulatory agency websites, such as osha.gov, and follow them on social media (e.g., LinkedIn). Most have an active social media platform to keep the public informed. Set a calendar reminder to make it a regular habit.
• Joining industry associations and your local safety council. These groups host meetings and events that provide regulatory updates and best practices.

Training and evaluating workers

Building training time into an already busy workday can be a challenge, particularly when you have multiple locations. Are you training too many employees? While more than 70 general industry regulations have training requirements, it’s likely that not all of them apply to work your employees are performing. Likewise, if there’s not an annual training requirement it may not be necessary to repeat your entire training program, but instead use toolbox talks or brief refresher trainings throughout the year.

Although OSHA doesn’t require that you give a quiz after training, it’s a great way to determine if employees understand the material. Follow-up observations, safety incident statistics, and safety observation reporting are among ways to ensure employees apply training on the job.