Safety Podcasts
The episodes worth your commute, curated and transcribed. Every pick comes with key takeaways, notable quotes and a full searchable transcript, so you can use them in your next safety meeting.
Featured episodes
How to Effectively Implement a Safety Management System
Host Scott Fowler talks with Greg Zigulis, president of Sixth Sense Safety Solutions, about why safety management systems fail: treating OSHA compliance as the end goal, downloading checklists without understanding the hazards behind them, fill-in-the-blank programs that sit on a shelf, and drift over time. Zigulis explains how standards like ANSI/ASSP Z10 give organizations of any size a framework, and why implementation is as much about people as about paperwork.
AI-Powered Workplace Safety: From Reactive Response to Proactive Prevention
Brandon Jones, Director of Safety and Risk Services at Missouri Employers Mutual, joins host Heather Carl to map what AI can already do for workplace safety: generate tailored safety programs and toolbox talks, analyze claims data against industry benchmarks, watch job sites through computer vision for PPE and forklift-pedestrian conflicts, and automate drudge work like contractor pre-qualification. His advice for the overwhelmed: just start prompting.
Construction Safety: A Tech Toolbox Talk
Timed to Construction Safety Week and the National Safety Stand-Down to Prevent Falls, Peggy Smedley delivers her own toolbox talk on technology and safety. She lays out the fatality numbers, 1,075 construction deaths in 2023, with falls, slips and trips causing 39.2 percent, explains how companies can participate in the stand-down, and digs into a case study of Skanska's AI-powered Safety Sidekick assistant. Her thesis: people and process first, then technology.
10 OSHA Compliance Myths Busted
Safety consultant and authorized OSHA outreach trainer Sheldon Primus works through eleven myths he keeps hearing in the field. No, OSHA cannot shut down your job site. No, a spoil pile does not make your excavation deeper. No, an excavation is not a permit-required confined space, and 10 and 30 hour cards are not compliance training. He backs each answer with the specific regulation, and closes with the one myth that turns out to be true: OSHA does have enforcement quotas, published in its own budget.
How Employee Engagement Makes Safety Management Easy
Brye Sargent, CSP and 20-year safety professional, kicks off a series on employee engagement by defining what it actually is: dedication and enthusiasm for the job, not compliance with policies or mandatory meeting attendance. She explains how to measure it through suggestions, referrals and mentoring, what a truly engaged workforce does for safety, and why engagement starts with the management team, not a bottom-up campaign.
Developing Successful Safety Management Systems
Mary Conquest interviews Dr Nektarios Karanikas, Associate Professor at Queensland University of Technology and former Hellenic Air Force Lt. Colonel, whose doctorate focused on safety management systems. He argues an OHS management system is not a set of documents but an environment of humans, equipment, culture and processes interacting toward a common purpose, and that the fastest way to fail is to document a system based on your understanding alone.
Rethinking Safety Culture
Blaine J. Hoffmann challenges the safety profession's favorite goal: building a safety culture. Safety professionals look at everything through the lens of their profession, and a separate safety culture often ends up competing with the culture the business is actually trying to build. His alternative is alignment: understand what the organization exists to do, then integrate safety checks, walks and committees into the quality and production routines that already run the place.
Safety Culture: Getting Leadership Support
Host Heather Carl talks with Clint Bergman, general manager and co-franchisee of a Two Men and a Truck operation, about why leadership buy-in decides whether a safety culture takes root. Bergman worked his way up from mover to owner, made safety rank a hair above profitability, and shares his 4M formula plus concrete engagement tactics like Kahoot quizzes and letting workers run parts of the safety meeting.
Improving Workplace Safety: Dr Todd Conklin
Radio New Zealand's Kathryn Ryan interviews Dr Todd Conklin, the Los Alamos National Laboratory psychologist behind Human and Organizational Performance. Against the backdrop of New Zealand's workplace fatality toll, Conklin argues that workers will make mistakes, that zero harm tells no one how to achieve zero harm, and that managers must build recoverability into systems so people can fail safely.
Workplace Safety Postings
Blaine J. Hoffmann walks through the poster and posting requirements most employers fall under: federal labor law posters like the EEO and FMLA notices, the OSHA Job Safety and Health poster, posting citations after an inspection, the annual OSHA 300A summary, state right-to-know notices and keeping safety data sheets available on site. Miss one and a single inspection can turn into a five figure fine.
Quick listens
Safety Moment: About Safety Moments
Hazard Assessment Toolbox Talk
Eye Safety Toolbox Talk
Hand Safety Toolbox Talk
Heat Stress Toolbox Talk
Ladder Safety Toolbox Talk
Safety Moment: Rumble Strips
