What happens when safety stops being treated as a compliance checkbox and starts being managed like the rest of the business? Andrea Peterson, Health, Safety & Environmental Director at Trystar, joins host Marc Juaire, Senior Director and Head of Product at VelocityEHS, on this episode of Rewiring Risk to explore how EHS leaders can connect safety to operational performance, earn executive buy-in, and prove the business value of prevention.
What happens when safety stops being treated as a compliance checkbox and starts being managed like the rest of the business? Andrea Peterson, Health, Safety & Environmental Director at Trystar, joins host Marc Juaire, Senior Director and Head of Product at VelocityEHS, on this episode of Rewiring Risk to explore how EHS leaders can connect safety to operational performance, earn executive buy-in, and prove the business value of prevention.
Andrea shares how watching the news coverage of 9/11 as a junior high student set her on a path toward prevention, then explains why the compliance mindset has persisted for so long and what it leaves on the table. She makes the case that a safety gap deserves the same line-stopping response as a quality defect, walks through practical leading indicators like near-miss-to-incident ratios and inspection trends, and shares how a capital request for machine guarding taught her to frame risk around potential serious injuries and fatalities, not just the injury rate. Marc and Andrea also dig into what it takes to build an authentic safety culture, why cross-functional alignment matters before you walk into the boardroom, and what an EHS leader can accomplish in their first 90 days.
Quotes
“When there’s a quality issue identified in a product, the line stops until that quality issue is corrected… When you’re talking about getting to the root cause of a quality problem, nobody questions it or gets nervous about it. That just is the way that business is. But really, a safety gap, whether it’s an issue or an incident, is no different.”
“I had a senior executive say, ‘Oh my God, we’re having all these near misses. Like, what’s going on here?’ And my comment was, ‘No, actually, they’re reporting.’… I would rather have 1,000 near misses reported than a serious injury or fatality.”
“We can have all of the support in the boardroom, but when the employees on the front line have that trust of their direct leaders that they can bring up safety items and it leads to action and not blame, that’s when that change starts to take place.”
Time Stamps
[0:36] Welcome to Rewiring Risk & Introducing Andrea Peterson
[2:04] Andrea's Why: From 9/11 to a Career in Prevention
[4:18] Why the Compliance Mindset Persists and What It Costs
[5:27] What Triggers the Shift From Compliance to Proactive Safety
[7:35] Asking Better Questions: From "Are We Compliant?" to "Do We Understand the Exposure?"
[8:14] Leading Indicators: Start With the Data You Already Have
[12:40] Why More Near Misses Can Be Good News
[14:32] Stop the Line: Treating Safety Gaps Like Quality Issues
[16:21] Earning Buy-In From Operations Leaders
[18:59] Safety Is a Team Sport: Aligning Before You Ask for Capital
[21:30] When Executives Become Safety Champions
[23:23] Proving ROI: The Machine Guarding Story
[29:44] Building an Authentic Safety Culture
[33:13] Culture as a Recruiting and Retention Advantage
[35:06] The First 90 Days: Focus on One Business-Critical Risk
[39:17] Rapid Fire: Future EHS Leaders, the Safety Program of the Month, and SIF Exposure
[44:02] Closing Thoughts and Outro
Links
Connect with the guest and host on LinkedIn!
Learn more about: