New Year’s Resolutions for Safety Professionals

6 New Year’s Resolutions for Safety Professionals

Yes, we know, everyone is swamped with New Year’s resolutions these days, about eating right, exercising, and saving money. But the start of a new year is a good time to look at your safety program at work. It’s a chance to build on what worked last year, fix what didn’t and maybe try out some new ideas to keep everyone healthy and injury-free. Here are six solid resolutions to make 2025 the safest year ever!

1. Goodbye 2024, but First, Tell Us What You Learned

So, like any good television New Year’s program, let’s start off with a look back at 2024. What was your best achievement in improving your corporate culture? What was the worst catastrophe? If your job produces measurable data, go over it looking for patterns. Are more accidents happening during the night shift? More “slip, trip and falls” occurring each year? A thorough review of the data can tell you where you need to focus your attention for the coming year.

2. Resolve to Stay Current with Regulations

First, figure out what regulations you need to be current with. If your job involves compliance, you’ll need to work out what that really means. Are you in the transportation sector? Internal health and safety? Fire protection? Environmental? Product liability? All of these involve different regulations. Yes, it’s nice to be cross-trained, but you need to focus on the regulations that are part of your job responsibilities.

Take a look at the big picture. Yes, you’ll probably need to start with federal regulations. But also look at state (or provincial) and municipal. Do you sell to other countries or markets such as the European Union (EU)? They’ll need to be factored in as well. Don’t forget, there may also be codes of practice or standards such as ISO that while they aren’t “technically” regulations, your organization will be expected to comply with them.

How can you ensure that you’re current with all these requirements? Back before the internet this could be a difficult question. Fortunately, most national and state/provincial regulations can be found online for free. Other regulations and standards such as the IATA Dangerous Goods Regulations for air transport are not available online, but at least you can source and order them that way. Most of these come as downloadable purchases, so you can update quickly, if not inexpensively.

Check each regulation you currently access. Many, like the IATA Dangerous Goods Regulations, are dated and must be repurchased regularly. However, in North America, most regulations don’t come with a fixed schedule for updates. Some years have a lot of changes, others far fewer. So, you’ll have to do your research if you’re working with, say, the “Hazardous Materials Regulations” of Title 49, Code of Federal Regulations for U.S. transport, or the Canadian “Transportation of Dangerous Goods Regulations.”

Fortunately, there are now a lot of online resources. Of course, the websites of the regulatory bodies are your first stop. But many of them will have services that provide push notifications that send new information to your inbox without you having to lift a finger. Google alerts can also send you daily sweeps of postings for topics like “dangerous goods” or “OSHA.”

And, of course, don’t forget us here at ICC. If you sign up for our free newsletter, you’ll find lots of useful information about regulatory change coming your way.

3. Update Your Documents

Once you’re current with any changes over the past year, take a look at your paperwork. Has there been any change to hazardous materials documentation? (Hint – yes, there’s a new rule for air documentation that started on January 1, 2025.) Make sure that any computer programs used for documentation have been amended as necessary.

Review your Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs). We bet you’ll find lots of potentially outdated information lurking in them. Even something as critical as emergency contacts may have changed over the past year. Don’t just trust what’s in the paperwork. If it’s a telephone number, try to call it. If it’s a list of the chain of authority, make sure that each person is still in the same position.

Safety Data Sheets (SDSs) are one area where there’s a lot of outdated information can be found. Remember that both Canada and the United States have updated their hazard communication standard to the 7^th edition of the Globally Harmonized System of Classification and Labelling of Chemicals. These changes affect both the basic template for SDSs and substance-specific information such as classification. Pay attention to sections where inconsistencies are often found, such as:

Section 2, Hazard Communication – is the information here the same as you provide on the product label?
Section 4, First Aid – again, are the procedures here consistent with what’s on the label? You can provide more information in this section, of course, but it must be consistent with the label text. Don’t give instructions for inducing vomiting if the label says, “Do not induce vomiting.”
Section 14, Transportation – a common mistake we see here is that the information on the SDS is not the same as how the organization actually ships the product. Remember, carriers may refuse the shipment if it identifies, say, a substance as being a Class 3 flammable liquid but you’re shipping by air as a Class 9 Consumer Commodity.

4. Fine-Tune Your Training

When was the last time you reviewed your training protocols for regulatory compliance? Unfortunately, that PowerPoint or Computer-Based Training (CBT) program you’ve been using for the past ten years may be badly outdated. Now’s the time to review what you’re teaching your staff about their duties. Check for:

Outdated regulatory information;
Obsolete SOPs; and
Vague training goals and metrics.

If you’re in charge of training, don’t forget to update yourself on the latest research on how adults learn. In today’s workplaces you’ll likely have workers with differing styles of learning and retention.

Review how you document your training. Your procedures should start by outlining the specific outcomes you want to see in participants, and how you will evaluate if they’ve achieved them. Don’t forget to check each regulation to see if testing is a requirement, and what records you’ll have to keep. These can vary a lot between different regulations.

5. Housekeeping and Other Details

Of course, New Year’s resolutions always seem to include the boring, but obvious, things. So resolve this year that you’re not just going to work on your abs, but your workplace housekeeping. If you’ve been keeping proper metrics you should see where the worst of your problems are already, but maybe look at some issues in a new way.

Safety culture – do your workers buy in to the idea that safety is important? And does management support you? What can you do to spread the message that safety isn’t a cost, it’s a benefit to everyone?
Improving processes – maybe a lot of accidents last year were due to workers making mistakes. Well, rather than nagging them one more time to avoid those mistakes, can you eliminate the step in your process that makes people cut corners or do things the wrong way? Is that step too time-consuming or complicated? Is there a way the job could be done cutting out that step entirely?
Knowing your workplace culture – some plans may look good on the surface, but backfire on you. It’s long been known that rewarding low accident statistics may simply drive accidents and near misses underground, with workers not wanting to report incidents for fear of losing their benefits. Some workers may even pressure others to avoid reporting them. Workplaces always have their own cultures and unwritten rules. Find out what they are in your workplace, and you’ll better understand how to influence safety behavior.

6. Be Active in the Regulated Community

One of the most important, and yet often neglected, role of the safety professional is as a voice for your organization to regulators. Regulators may think they know what will be effective in your workplace but completely miss out on how things actually work there. Keep an eye on the publications (such as the Federal Register or Canada Gazette) where new regulations are published, and don’t just skim proposed changes. Think carefully how they’ll affect your business.

Then – and this is the important step – send in comments. If a new rule is going to cost way more than the government estimates, let them know. If possible, include your own estimates of the costs versus benefits – regulators love that sort of data. Or will a proposal actually work well for you? Send in a comment of support, so it doesn’t get watered down. Your voice actually matters. Stop problems before they reach the final rule stage.

Conclusion

A new year is always busy, but it’s also a time to reflect on the past and to anticipate the future. And if you’re puzzled or looking for more information, contact us here at ICC the Compliance Center, where we can get you started on creating a safer 2025. If you have any questions, our team of experts is just a call away for our customers at 855.734.5469 or send us an email, we’re happy to help