☕ Untapped Secret to Hitting Your Company’s Goals? Your Safety Program

Good morning! We’re back with another week of insights, updates, and tools to help you stay one step ahead in the world of workplace safety. Whether you’re putting out fires (figuratively—or literally), tackling new challenges, or just trying to make things a little better than they were yesterday, we’ve got your back.

Let’s dive in and keep pushing safety forward. 💥🛡️

THIS WEEK’S TIPS

This week’s safety upgrades:

• Safety and Goals

• Mental Health and Beyond

• NIOSH Update

PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

This Weeks Professional Development Tip

• How to stand up for yourself at work more effectively

Canceled to “Save” $866: The Absurd Reality of Scientific Cuts Under DOGE

Elena Austin spent three years studying how wildfire smoke affects school air quality — but her EPA-funded research was abruptly canceled by Elon Musk’s DOGE agency to save a whopping… $866. That’s 0.2% of the grant, already spent, with the findings ready to present. Now the meeting's canceled too.

Why? No one will say. But her work involved Tribal partnerships and indoor air quality — two things that may have tripped ideological red flags. And her next project? It was set to study pesticide exposure in farmworkers… until NIOSH was gutted too.

The kicker? DOGE lists her grant on their "Wall of Receipts" as a win. Read the full story.

The Untapped Secret to Hitting Your Company’s Goals? Your Safety Program

What if your next big win didn’t come from a new hire or a tech upgrade—but from your safety program? Smart safety systems are quietly becoming the backbone of high-performing operations, reducing downtime, boosting efficiency, and making safety directors the unexpected heroes of business growth. If you’re still treating risk management as a checkbox, you’re leaving serious value on the table. Want to future-proof your site and your leadership role? Start here →

One’s slick, fast, and built for high-stakes missions.

The other’s... limping through a 14-tab spreadsheet with broken formulas and a prayer.

🎯 EHS tech should feel like Bond, not burnout.

But too many safety teams are still relying on messy Excel sheets for critical risk data. Origami Risk lays out 4 big shifts that take you from duct-taped processes to actual strategy: ✅ Compliance → Value ✅ Reactive → Predictive ✅ Siloed → Connected ✅ Lagging → Real-time

👉 Learn how to level up your program here

So—who’s running your program: 007 or “please don’t crash” Craig?

Mental Health at Work Isn’t Just a Month—It’s a Movement

May is Mental Health Awareness Month—but supporting employee well-being shouldn’t end on May 31. From inclusive language and storytelling to expert speakers and leadership vulnerability, this guide offers practical, stigma-busting ways to create a culture that truly honors mental health at work. Because mental health isn’t a nice-to-have—it impacts 100% of your team, every day. Ready to lead with empathy? Read more.

NIOSH Gets a Partial Reprieve—But the Fight Isn’t Over

After massive backlash and a federal lawsuit from a coal miner, the Trump administration has walked back some of its devastating cuts to the workplace safety agency NIOSH. About 328 employees have been reinstated—mostly those tied to high-profile programs like coal miner respiratory health and the 9/11 survivor registry.

But the damage isn’t undone. Over 500 staff remain out, entire programs are still frozen, and critical work on mining safety, toxic chemicals, and cancer clusters continues to unravel. Even HHS Secretary RFK Jr. seemed unaware of the chaos when grilled by Congress this week. As one NIOSH leader put it, “This isn’t the NIOSH that American workers need.” Read the full story.

Your Ergo Solution.

Overexertion is costing companies $12.49 BILLION each year and feeding into a much larger problem! That’s why we’ve partnered with 3motionAI to enhance workplace safety with their Risk Flashlight solution. Together, we’re empowering EHS professionals to tackle these costly problems at the root, building a safer, more equitable workplace.

Steps to Take:

1. Learn more about 3motionAI: Read, here

2. Show company leadership how you can protect the bottom line.

3. Earn the respect you deserve by making a real impact.

NEWS
Your Virtual Water Cooler

• Cal/OSHA Announces Discussion Drafts for Revised Wildfire Smoke Protection and Heat Illness Prevention Standards

• Risk Characterization for Silica-related Silicosis and Lung Cancer in Communities Adjacent to Sand and Gravel Extraction Facilities: Examining Limitations in our Current Risk Methods

• Trump pick for workplace safety agency sparks fears heat protections will be derailed

• ‘Always be all in’: Steelworkers resolve to ‘redouble’ worker safety efforts

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