Your go-to blog for modern lab management

Lab Safety Concerns for Your Growing Startup

As a startup, leveling up can be exhilarating and terrifying. Making a mistake at this stage can range from frustrating to fatal for your business.

Connect your labels to your Electronic Lab Notebook. The hassle-free solution to print labels directly from the sample database in your Electronic Lab Notebook (ELN) with the free FLUICS Print Add-on for eLabJournal. Truly plug & play: Connect the printer, install the Add-on and start printing from eLabJournal.

The Power of eLabJournal

Bioscientists love the capability of documenting all the details of the experiments they perform, including the procedures, protocols, settings, results, and observations in the Electronic Lab Notebook (ELN) module of eLabJournal, while storing and accessing their samples with its Sample Tracking module. It automates many of the processes, reduces the possibility of error, and greatly increases productivity.

Barcoding Samples Inevitable

Before the samples, contained in small tubes, can be stored at sub-Antarctic temperatures in cryogenic freezers they obviously need to be labeled. With all that digital information in the eLabJournal’s ELN and Sample Tracking modules, it was obvious that writing labels by hand would be error-prone, inefficient, and make no sense at all. Barcoded labels would make labeling and retrieving the tubes foolproof and fast.

But Setting Up Printers Was a Pain in the Neck

Label printers have been available, but it was technical, difficult, and time-consuming to interface them with the eLabJournal system. Labels to fit cryogenic sample tubes had to be a precisely particular size, and have the rare physical characteristics to resist smudging and remain strongly adhesive for long periods of time at minus 80 degrees Celsius, as well as in liquid nitrogen. And they had to fit in human readable print as well as the QR code. Setting up such printers could and has been done, but it was all a pain in the neck.

FLUICS Print Now Offers Reliable Label Printing in Seconds

All of the problems have been solved by FLUICS CONNECT, a startup company out of the Technical University Munich, and their specialized Online Label Printing system. It uses robust, bright yellow labels sized perfectly for bio lab sample tubes and offers two standard label layouts with both machine-readable QR codes and human-readable text. The FLUICS CONNECT Online Printer and the Bio-ITech eLabJournal system have been designed and configured to work in harmony every time. Plug the printer into your eLabJournal system, select the Fluics Print configuration, and you are off and running, able to print labels immediately without another thought. Printing perfect labels is fast, easy, and completely reliable. What a relief!

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News

eLabJournal Integrates FLUICS Print Add-on

Over the last few weeks, many research organizations have asked staff to work from home to prevent the spread of infection.

This has been a stressful transition for many people. Working from home is not only mentally taxing, it also presents a number of new challenges to actually completing your work (especially if you are in a position like EHS, where much of your work may be tied to physically interacting with research and physical spaces).

On a more positive note, these changes have highlighted opportunities for organizations to adapt the way they work and offer more flexible arrangements over the long haul.

Whether you need to work from home temporarily during an emergency, while recovering from an illness, or as part of a permanent assignment, it’s important to ensure that you and your team have the tools in place to do your jobs fully without sacrificing quality or productivity.

Today, we’ll share a few of the ways SciShield can support EHS and leadership in sustainably working remotely.

Stay connected to the data

In SciShield, you can access all of your safety and compliance information remotely. You can view and analyze real-time information about your researchers, labs, and equipment securely from your laptop or tablet, so you never have to run back to the office to retrieve a binder or reference a chart.

Communicate with your team

You can also use SciShield to stay in contact with research, facilities, and maintenance personnel (and students, if you’re a college or university). Logically, when everyone is working from home, remote communication tools like email are used more frequently.

Without SciShield, when you use regular email, important messages can easily get lost in an overflowing inbox. Additionally, maintaining proper lists of individuals based on their roles and lab association becomes more important and more difficult.

With SciShield’s Smart Mailer tool, targeted email communications based on live-updated filters can be sent both to a standard inbox and a central high-visibility location on each user’s home page. Thanks to Smart Mailer, you can spend your energy working to help people stay safe instead of trying to keep up with the administrative burden of email management.

Answer questions quickly with ObServ

ObServ is a new feature in SciShield that is nearing deployment. For personnel still on-site, it is critical that they become an extension of the safety team. Making sure they can quickly communicate observations and things that “just don’t look right” is an integral aspect of top-notch risk mitigation and fast response times.

With the ObServ feature, anyone can serve the community by sharing safety observations with EHS and even snapping a quick picture. When risks are present, time is of the essence and it is everyone’s responsibility to raise a flag if they “see something, to say something.” Allow your boots on the ground personnel to shine the light on key areas of risk, even when you are not there.

Coordinate hazardous waste pickups

While we haven’t quite got the Hazardous Waste Removing AI Robot Module up and running, we’re glad to say that all other parts of the process can be completed remotely.

Requests for hazardous waste pickups can be submitted, reviewed, and received remotely within SciShield. After the request is in, the individual responsible for pickup will receive the detailed request, complete the pickup, and either mark it as done or notify you of any issues.

Keep tabs on hazards

Who is handling hazardous chemicals? Which researchers are in contact with animals? SciShield’s Lab Safety Profiler gives you a bird’s eye view of each researcher and each laboratory’s activities and hazards. With SciShield, you can also drill down to find individuals or groups based on important hazards (like working with coronavirus-infected cell lines).

For remote EHS staff, this can be a huge help in driving communication, providing centralize software training, and assigning appropriate PPE. Many of our customers have even used this feature to identify labs that might be able to donate COVID-19 related supplies and PPE, or determine which labs have glycerol stocks that can be used to create hand sanitizer.

Coordinate an emergency response

SciShield’s Lab Safety Profiler can also be useful in the event of an emergency like a fire or chemical spill. Even if you’re not on site, you can quickly communicate with first responders about what’s happening on site and in specific areas.

In a first response, minutes matter. Often, first responders will not enter a building or space until they are confident they know what hazards are present. If you ever find yourself in a situation where you have to support a first response, the last thing you want to be doing is scrambling or waiting for data to be gathered.

Deliver training online

SciShield allows you to offer both end-to-end online training and in-person trainings. Even for online training, SciShield can...

Identify individuals who need training
Assign targeted training based on hazards
Send automated reminders
Allow users to take training remotely
Embed quizzes into training courses for knowledge retention
Provide certificates of training completion
Automatically remind users when renewal training is required

That means EHS can keep learning going while labs are closed, and researchers can complete their training requirements whenever and wherever they want. In times like this, many researchers want to get their training completed so they can get it off their plate and focus on research when they return to the lab.

Leverage self inspections

Self inspections are fast, effective, and don’t require EHS personnel to go on site. Using SciShield, one or more lab representatives can conduct the inspection on their smartphone or tablet. This allows EHS to empower researchers to think about the risks and potential hazards around them. Then, EHS can communicate around corrective actions and close out inspections digitally. It’s a win-win for everyone.

Self inspections in SciShield can be assigned based on hazards. This means that you can locate groups and spaces you may not have been previously aware of that need inspecting. You have the ability to set checklists and corrective actions for each finding, and you can view a log of inspections to easily review findings.

Your next steps

Whether you’re working from home or in the office, SciShield helps you stay sane and keep your researchers safe. Our team is happy to answer any questions you might have about using SciShield for remote work, or help you troubleshoot any problems you or your team may be experiencing with working remotely.

To learn more, contact us here.

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Working From Home With SciShield - Long Term Sustainability

WFH is not only mentally taxing, it also presents a number of new challenges to actually completing your work. We'll show you how SciShield can help.

As the novel coronavirus outbreak grows, many EHS teams are closing down non-essential labs and working from home to reduce the spread of infection. At the same time, these EHS teams are also preparing to support some essential scientists to ramp up research related to COVID-19.

Across the world, SciShield is supporting EHS teams as they adjust to these new demands.

Below, we outline a few big ways that our software provides solutions for critical needs that may otherwise be stumbling blocks for you and your team. Looking forward, you can expect these needs will remain or increase in importance as the research and safety communities expand their digital footprint.

Communicate emergency information with Smart Mailer

Have confidence in reaching the right people

With SciShield’s Smart Mailer, EHS departments can share vital information with the correct staff. You can send mass communications with updates about space closures, remote work and travel policies, and supplementary resources to your entire user base. Or, you can send targeted communications to specific labs that are shutting down to figure out what needs to get done and ensure those actions get completed.

To illustrate, many of our customers are actively using SciShield to identify specific types of PPE across their organizations. They then use Smart Mailer to communicate and coordinate collecting it for donations to support the COVID-19 response in their healthcare communities.

Provide standardized instructions

When preparing research spaces for Emergency Shutdown, you must ensure that everyone working in that lab knows the procedures and how to document their actions. Working from home doesn’t mean much if you’re constantly being dragged in to check on an incubator that’s dry and alarming because someone forgot to properly shut it down.

On the flip side, being able to confidently contact personnel that are still hard at work in labs is a must. This can be for policy updates, to share information, or even to send them a thank you message for their efforts.

Answer questions quickly with ObServ

Ensure personnel are trained for new & novel hazards

As labs ramp up research related to COVID-19, scientists will need additional training for the new hazards they encounter. People who are working on developing vaccines, studying potential treatments, and creating disinfectants and protective equipment also need to be protected themselves.

With SciShield, both EHS staff and lab users can update job activities to reflect new responsibilities and hazards. Training rules can be created so that individuals with certain job activities are automatically assigned specific training courses. This improves thoroughness of training coverage and takes a big administrative task right off your plate.

On the flip side, scientists who have to shelve their experiments can make the most of their downtime by getting ahead on training. SciShield’s training lets you assign, deliver, and quiz training content online, meaning any researcher with a laptop or mobile phone can stay current while they’re away from the lab.

Shut down labs

Help staff properly document and shut down equipment

SciShield enables EHS staff to coordinate lab closings without having to go on site. During an extended shutdown, freezers may need to be defrosted or completely shut down, water baths emptied and unplugged, and incubators properly powered down. You can use the Equipment in SciShield to identify the exact location of equipment that needs to be hibernated and with Smart Mailer, contact the right people to do it.

Identify, dispose of, and store dangerous materials

Chemicals and radioactive materials also need to be stored or disposed of properly. For example, peroxide formers that are nearing their expiration date will need to be identified and dealt with (nobody wants to return to a cabinet full of unstable explosives).

Similarly, hazardous chemicals that could be misused by bad actors — such as the DHS’ Chemicals of Interest (COI) — can’t be left unsecured. EHS staff can use SciShield’s ChemTracker or Hazard Profiler to identify labs that have these substances and make sure they’re properly addressed before the lab is shut down.

Other responsibilities include discarding or freezing samples and arranging for cultures and animals to be fed and checked on. Self-inspections, which can be performed and logged in SciShield, ensure all of these activities get completed before an Emergency Shutdown is complete.

Keep labs running safely

Oversee IBC approvals and amendments

EHS teams can also use SciShield to sustainably oversee essential labs that remain open during the stay-home period. With digital IBC and Biosafety registrations, personnel can review and approve protocols remotely. At least for the time being, the NIH has even approved Tele- and Video-conferencing for IBC meetings. This enables organizations to fast-track critical research related to COVID-19 without compromising the personal safety of individuals.

Biosafety officers can also use SciShield’s Material Data reports to see who’s using specific agents (even if they’re not fully submitted yet). This helps ensure everyone working with a particular agent such as coronavirus has gone through the proper approvals and minimizes surprises down the line.

Empower staff with safety data

SciShield also offers a suite of useful tools to empower researchers. For example, the Safety Data Sheet (SDS) Search gives researchers a convenient way to find and view safety information about the possibly new chemicals they’re working with.

Managing lab safety during COVID-19 — and beyond

Deploying SciShield for the novel coronavirus outbreak can help keep people safe and ensure research continuity during a crisis. What’s more, SciShield can benefit your organization for years to come as you create a sustainable and digital safety and risk management platform.

In our next article, we’ll look at some of the ways SciShield can help EHS teams and leadership work from home successfully and sustainably, no matter the reason. Stay tuned!

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Working From Home With SciShield - Shutting Down and Ramping Up

Across the world, SciShield is supporting EHS teams as they adjust to the new demands of our COVID-19 society.

Disclaimer: Sorry, farmers. This article is not about revenue protection as it applies to insurance for crops, but rather it is about revenue protection as a general business operations concept.

Revenue is the lifeblood of a business. Without it, organizations can't cover expenses, generate profits, keep people employed, and grow.

So if the ability to generate revenue is disrupted by an unexpected event — such as losing a key employee, or a hazmat response that shuts down a wing of laboratories — it can jeopardize an organization’s chances to continue operating in the long run.

Of course, there are many risks that pose threats to your revenue — some more obvious than others. That’s where revenue protection comes in. In this article, we’ll outline a simple definition of revenue protection, and show you how your EHS department can increase its value while playing a crucial role in guarding against revenue loss.

What is revenue protection?

Revenue protection is a business strategy with the goal of ensuring that expected revenue is generated and not lost. It’s a way of guarding against risks such as property damage, loss of operating capacity, damage to capital equipment, downtime of key assets, or any other disruptions to revenue-generating operations.

Unlike, say, human resources or accounting, revenue protection isn’t a single role in your organization. Revenue protection tactics can include security guards, cybersecurity specialists, auditors, billing and account managers, PR professionals, — anyone who is involved in identifying and addressing potential threats to your organization’s revenue stream.

Is environmental, health, and safety (EHS) part of revenue protection?

It sure is. EHS is an important part of revenue protection – and is often right on the front lines.

As we said before, revenue protection comes from a diverse range of roles in your organization — and EHS is no exception.

Work-related injuries and illnesses can prevent key employees from performing their jobs, resulting in lost revenue and costly medical expenses for your company. Companies lose millions of dollars each year due to injuries. (In 2017 the cost of U.S. workers’ lost productivity is estimated at $50.7 billion, according to the National Safety Council).

In research environments, revenue protection often comes in the form of maintaining consistent operations. A serious chemical spill, for example, is an event that can affect your revenue by...

Subjecting your organization to fines and penalties.
Incurring legal fees.
Creating negative press that hurts your reputation, leading to reduced business.
Slowing down production or R&D by taking research wings or equipment out of use while they are cleaned or repaired.

By investing in EHS, companies can prevent these types of situations from occurring in the first place. If they do occur, EHS can ensure that harm is minimized, and that operations can resume as quickly as possible with the least amount of disruption.

EHS members often scramble to find the information they need to protect people, assets, and property. It's clear that this kind of struggle is antithetical to supporting revenue protection. If EHS has easy and immediate access to digitized, real time, accurate information, they will be far better equipped to protect your organization.

Now, let’s look at some specific ways your EHS program can support your revenue protection efforts.

How EHS supports revenue protection

Training

One way your EHS department can help protect against loss of revenue is by developing and implementing effective training programs. Training helps researchers do their jobs safely and avoid costly mistakes. Not only that, but training can improve productivity to ensure researchers are performing at their peak. Improper training and record management can also lead to costly fines.

Equipment Management

Losing access to a big piece of equipment or a specialized research zone for a length of time can set your projects back for months or even years. Effective equipment management ensures that assets are inspected, serviced, and maintained regularly to keep them in good working order. It also ensures that researchers get the appropriate training for the research equipment they use so that they can work safely and follow proper operating protocols.

Improving First Response

While it’s an uncommon occurrence, a first response can result in significant costs both upfront and in lost access to research areas and equipment. During a first response, minutes matter, and every minute has a dollar amount tied to it. A short delay can lead to a greatly worsened outcome, so the more quickly your EHS team can act and provide necessary information to first responders, the more the impact will be mitigated. In the case of a fire or high-risk chemical incident, first responders are often instructed to review the hazards and materials present before entering the building or space.

Loss Controls

Revenue protection goes hand in hand with loss control. While loss control is aimed at minimizing the potential for costly insurance claims, it is certainly a part of revenue protection. A loss can be an extremely disruptive event, which can challenge revenue-generating activities to continue without interruption. Both are important aspects of an effective risk management program.

Final thoughts

Staying profitable isn’t just about finding ways to earn revenue. It’s equally important to make sure that you protect your existing revenue from the unexpected and get the most productivity out of your people. There are many ways to do this, but getting full value from your EHS department is a good place to start.

One way to start building a revenue protection strategy is to work with your EHS department to determine your potential risks and opportunities. A small-time investment today can help protect the future and the sustainability of your organization for years to come.

"Recent Articles""popular_all_time

How EHS Supports Revenue Protection

Without revenue, organizations can't cover expenses (including employees). EHS is a critical part of revenue protection – often right on the front lines.

eLabJournal featured on AdvancementsTV with Ted Danson

Barcodes, QR codes, and RFID tags might seem similar, but they're not interchangeable. While all three are tools that can help you tag and track chemical containers, each is designed to work differently.

Before you can decide which labeling system is right for your chemical inventory management, you'll need to understand the different types of tracking tags, what information they contain, and the strengths and limitations of each one.

We worked with our Manager of Chemical Solutions, Sarina Schwartz-Hinds, to develop this guide so that you can get to know the various available labeling systems.

Why Should You Consider Chemical Labeling?

A single research laboratory can have hundreds of bottles, vials, and tubs of chemicals on hand. For each container, you need to track the identity of the chemicals, amount present, associated hazards, as well as where it’s located and to whom it belongs.

In addition, each new container needs to be logged in your chemical inventory when it’s purchased and tracked when it’s disposed of. That’s a lot of information! And as we all know, the devil is in the details — the one thing that gets missed somehow always ends up being the most important.

The most thorough solution is to place stickers or tags (in the form of barcodes, QR codes, or RFID tags) on your chemical containers when they enter your facility. But how do you decide which tool to use? Let’s break it down.

Barcodes

As the name suggests, barcodes are a series of black lines (or “bars”) that represent a string of numbers (a “code”). Barcodes are also known as Universal Product Codes (UPC).

When you scan a barcode, the scanner translates the sequence of bars into a string of numbers. These numbers correspond to a specific record in a database that contains information about the associated record.

Barcodes can be used to label virtually anything — including chemical containers. They’re inexpensive to create and print. Since most barcode scanners are just point-and-click devices, they require virtually no training. Today, there are even apps available that allow you to use your mobile phone or tablet as a barcode scanner.

However, there are some downsides to barcodes. The biggest is that each container has to be scanned individually, which can be time-consuming if you need to inventory a large number of containers in a short time (this challenge is the same for QR codes).

A common misconception about barcodes for chemical inventory tracking is that you can use the barcode that’s already on the container when you get it. But because the manufacturer’s label corresponds to their inventory, you’ll need to print a new label for your inventory. If you get 4 bottles of sodium azide from one manufacturer, they’ll all have identical barcodes! That’s counterproductive to your container tracking efforts. Fortunately, printing and affixing new labels is fast and easy (though there is more complexity to selecting the right label than you might expect).

Pros and Cons of Chemical Inventory Barcodes

Pros:

Inexpensive to create and print
Easy to use
Time-tested
If you decide to switch chemical inventory tracking software, barcodes can be easily transferred to the new system

Cons:

Limited data storage and no special characters
Each container must be scanned individually

QR codes

A QR code is a two-dimensional barcode that can be read by a smartphone or tablet. QR, or Quick Responsive, codes were first developed in 1994 for the automotive industry. Today, you might see QR codes on concert or sporting event tickets, or on marketing materials like flyers, coupons, and posters. They are also frequently used for chemical inventory tracking.

The information in a QR code is, 99% of the time, a static URL (for example, encoding the string https://www.scishield.com/en/modules/chemtracker but written in symbolic squares). When you scan a QR code with your device's camera, you'll be automatically taken to the specific webpage (URL) that the code instructs. Once a QR code is printed, it will always direct to that specific URL.

This is no different for your chemical inventory system. When you scan the QR code on a container, it will often be set up to take you to a URL specific to that individual container. Generally, you’ll have the page set up to display relevant information about the particular container. As you may already be able to imagine, QR codes can store much more information in a given area than normal linear barcodes.

It is critical to remember that once your label has been printed, the destination URL cannot be changed. So if you ever need to change the URL — for example, during a site redesign or migration to a new software system — you would have to print all new labels and physically replace the old ones for each container in your inventory. That could mean relabeling thousands of containers. From a perspective of future-proofing your chemical inventory, QR codes create a lot of risk for additional, avoidable work and cost.

To illustrate this critical difference, let’s quickly go through the process of migrating a barcode vs a QR code based from an old chemical inventory system to a new one:

Understanding chemical inventory barcode migration:

In your old system when a barcode is scanned, the scanner reads a string of charactersExample: .
Your system cross-references this string () with your database, which pulls information from or directs you to the associated pageExample: Sodium Azide bottle #46.
In your new system, you need to migrate your chemical inventory information (including the data for Sodium Azide bottle #46).
When the existing barcode is scanned, it still gives the same string () and your new database can cross-reference it and provide you with information about Sodium Azide bottle #46.
Success! You’re all done, and you don’t need to change your labels.

Understanding Chemical Inventory QR code migration:

In your old system, when a QR code is scanned, the scanner reads the string of characters
Example: https://www.oldsystem.com/SodiumAzide46.
You are automatically redirected to the URL where you can view information about the container, or information is pulled from that URL.
In your new system, you need to migrate your chemical inventory information (including the data for Sodium Azide bottle #46).Here’s where the problems begin:
When the existing QR code is scanned, it still takes you to the www.oldsystem.com address. But you don’t have a contract with your old system – you need to go to www.newsystem.com!
The QR code is now effectively useless. It leads to a dead URL. You now need to generate a new QR code for Sodium Azide bottle #46, and then go out and apply it to the correct bottle. You also need to do this for every other container in your chemical inventory.

Pros and Cons of Chemical Inventory QR Codes

Pros:

Easy to use
No special scanner required - can use a mobile phone or tablet
Store large amounts of information

Cons:

Destination can’t be changed after printing
Each container must be scanned individually

RFID

RFID stands for radio frequency identification. Unlike barcodes and QR codes, which use graphics to encode information, RFID uses radio waves to transmit information to a specialized electronic reader. You might have seen RFID tags used to tag books at the library, to microchip your pet, or to scan into your office — and of course, for chemical inventories.

As we said before, RFID tags transmit information wirelessly from the tag to the paired reader using radio waves. That means RFID tags don’t have to be scanned individually. They don’t even have to be within line of sight of the reader. As long as the tags are within range — typically between 3 and 100 feet, depending on the type of tag (some can be designed for close proximity of inches) — they will transmit information to the reader.

This has many useful applications for chemical management. Instead of scanning each container individually, you can inventory an entire stockroom just by waving the RFID reader nearby.

Or, you could place a reader in a monitoring station near waste disposal areas. As containers pass by the monitoring station on their way to the disposal bin, the reader will log each chemical being discarded.

This convenience comes with some trade-offs, though. Because they utilize more complex technology, RFID tags and readers cost more than barcodes. And since RFID uses radio waves rather than line-of-sight, readers may pick up undesired chemical labels from areas outside of the desired survey area. RFID systems can also be interrupted by other devices that emit RF signals. While that’s not necessarily a deal-breaker, it’s something to consider when setting up your inventory system and deciding what types of tags and readers to get.

Pros and Cons of Chemical Inventory RFID Tags

Pros:

Tags don’t need to be scanned individually
Fastest way to read a large number of containers
All data is transmitted instantaneously
Can set up static monitoring stations

Cons:

Tags and readers are more expensive
May be affected by interference
More complex technology means that when something doesn’t work, it may be harder to fix

Final Thoughts

Now that you know the differences between barcodes, QR codes, and RFID tags, you’ll be in a better position to choose the right labeling system for your needs.

Labeling can also be complicated, which we’ll tackle in-depth in a future post. For now we’ll leave you with some food for thought:

Choosing a labeling system is more complicated than just printing out stickers and affixing them on containers. You’ll need to consider what information you want to store, where the labels will be used, and how you plan to distribute, apply, and use them.
The laboratory environment presents its own set of unique challenges for labeling. Chemical labels must be rugged enough to withstand abuse from heat, cold, water, and even exposure to corrosive chemicals or strong solvents.
Some organizations employ a combination of different labeling methods to meet their needs.

SciShield’s chemical inventory barcode system was built by scientists, for scientists. Built with a proprietary chemical database originally developed by Stanford University, ChemTracker utilizes RFID tagging to simplify your chemical inventory management, increase accuracy, and streamline internal processes. Leverage our scalable SaaS solution to meet your unique laboratory needs. Request a consultation with our team to learn more.

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Understanding Chemical Inventory Management Tracking Tools

SciShield breaks down the pros and cons of barcodes, QR codes, and RFID tags so you can choose the right labeling system for your chemical inventory management.

If you want to succeed as a safety leader, it’s not enough to focus solely on logistics and data management – you have to get good at ‘soft skills’ as well.

Soft skills are attributes like communication, teamwork, and problem-solving that enable you to engage with and motivate your researchers to care about safety (they also help in interactions with colleagues and management!).

Without these skills, even the savviest safety professionals will find themselves fighting a losing battle to get their workforce to carry out safety practices.

To help you hone your craft, we’re writing a series of articles each highlighting a different soft skill. Today’s topic is disagreeing.

Talking past one another

Disagreements are normal in any human interaction. We don't always see eye to eye, so we will understandably disagree from time to time. But sometimes, when we think we're disagreeing, we're actually “talking past one another”: a situation where two people talk about different subjects, while believing that they are talking about the same thing.

If you've ever said something like...

"Why don't you get it?!"
"You're not even listening to me!"
"It’s like we’re not speaking the same language!"
"That's what I've been saying this whole time!"

...then you've had the joy of experiencing this common phenomenon.

Talking past one another can happen with your partner, a coworker, a client, or even the cashier at the grocery store. By understanding why this happens and following a few simple communication tips, you can save yourself (and those around you) a great deal of frustration.

Why does “talking past one another” happen in the first place?

Like most misunderstandings, talking past one another starts with an assumption that you’re both on the same page (another good reason to practice active listening). It’s one reason this tends to happen more frequently in close relationships, like with your partner or a coworker who you see every day.

As humans, we all view issues through the lens of our own experience. Words can easily be misinterpreted through our own personal filters. So it’s no surprise that we sometimes find ourselves nodding along in agreement while talking about completely different subjects.

There are two different types of talking past one another. The first one happens when two people are using the same words, but assigning them a different meaning. In this situation, you start out thinking you’re on the same page, only to find out you’ve been talking about totally different things.

For example, imagine you fell a few days ago in the parking lot and landed on the curb. You think you might have broken or bruised a rib, so you decide to go to the doctor. When he asks what brings you in today, you tell him you’ve been having some chest pain. Suddenly, you find yourself being hooked up to an EKG machine to see if you’re having a heart attack.

In this scenario, you were both talking about “chest pain”, but those words meant something very different to each of you, and there was never a moment to clarify what you both meant. To avoid it, you could have offered more information about what lead to the chest pain, and the doctor could have asked a few more questions about what may be causing it.

The second type of talking past each other happens when we use different words but intend the same meaning. When this happens, you might think you’re disagreeing, but you’re actually saying the same thing.

For example, imagine you're arguing with your partner about money. You think they spend too much money. Your partner insists that you're pinching pennies and being controlling.

You're both so caught up in making your case that you overlook the fact that you both agree you need to get out of debt and start saving for retirement. Here, the issue stems from the “why” of the matter – if you had both taken a step back and made sure to understand why this is an important issue, you could have started working together and agreeing without all the strife.

Talking past one another can be incredibly frustrating. To avoid it, let’s look at some of the ways you can recognize when this is happening.

Signs you may be talking past one another

By knowing the signs of talking past each other, you’ll be in a better position to prevent miscommunication. Some common indicators include:

The conversation is going in circles
You’re both repeating yourselves
Neither party effectively addresses the other side’s issues or point of view
You’re more focused on getting your point across than understanding the other person
It seems like you’ve reached a dead end
You feel unheard or misunderstood

A good indicator that this is happening is if any of the above examples are particularly unexpected. If part of your reaction is due to the fact that you’re surprised there’s a disagreement, chances are, there may not actually be one.

Ok – so how do you prevent this from happening in the first place, and how do you address it when it occurs?

Tips to avoid talking past one another

The best way to stop talking past one another is to prevent it from happening in the first place. Before you launch into a conversation, it’s always good to ask yourself, “How might my conversation partner receive this?” before saying anything.

Don’t take for granted that you’re both on the same page. Instead, consider where misunderstandings might arise and clearly define what you’re talking about. That’s especially important if you’re tackling a sensitive or tense subject, or one where you’ve disagreed in the past.

As soon as you notice that you’re talking past one another, pause and address it immediately. It’s natural to want to avoid dealing with conflict, but doing so will only make things worse. If you let the conversation continue, you’ll only get further off course (and have an even harder time admitting there’s a fundamental misunderstanding when it does come to light).

Similarly, if you notice that other people are talking past one another, there are some steps you can take to get the conversation back on track. By intervening tactfully, you may be able to prevent a full-blown argument.

First, don’t jump into the conversation too quickly. Make sure you’re not in a highly emotional state – this will only escalate the situation (as mentioned above, conversations about EHS money and budgeting can often elicit these strong feelings). Take some time to listen and understand both sides of the conversation before you interject.

Then, ask if you can make an observation. Statements like, “It sounds like you’re both talking about X – is that right?” or “From what I’m hearing, you’re talking about Y, and you’re talking about Z – am I correct there?” can help people feel heard instead of threatened.

Ask questions without judgment to gather information, uncover potential areas of misunderstanding, diffuse defensive emotions, and help both parties find common ground.

One final note: Know when to step in and when to stay out. In the case of a heated argument between two people you oversee, for example, it may be appropriate for you to intervene. If, however, it’s a dispute between your peers, you’ll need to tread more carefully.

Your takeaway

Dealing with disagreement is never easy, but these tips can make it more manageable. Remember:

Often when we think we’re disagreeing with someone, we’re actually “talking past one another.”
Instead of making assumptions, listen objectively and try to hear the meaning behind the words. Do your best to be aware of your own subjective filters.
Disagreements are inevitable, but learning to handle them effectively can enhance your communication skills and strengthen your interpersonal relationships.

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Soft Skills for Safety – Disagreeing

Sometimes, when we think we're disagreeing, we're actually talking past one another. It can be incredibly frustrating, but it can also be avoided.

Unexpected events such as a fire or employee injury can happen at any time.

But what surprises many people is how often these events occur. A claims analysis from The Hartford found that 40% of businesses will incur a property or liability loss within the next 10 years. Thefts, fires, vehicle accidents, injuries, product liability, and reputational harm are among the most common types of insurance claims.

Fortunately, there are steps you can take to prevent these kinds of situations from happening in the first place. By implementing proven loss control strategies for your hazardous chemical management and lab safety needs, research organizations can manage risk, avoid accidents and injuries, and even reduce claims and insurance premiums.

Before we get to some of the ways loss control can save you money, let's first define a loss, as well as loss control.

What is a Loss?

In the insurance world, a loss is an injury or damage sustained that is covered under your insurance policy. Losses can include property damage, personnel loss, lost time, and legal liability that negatively affects your business or employees. For laboratories and research organizations, losses can include chemical spills and other hazardous chemical management incidents. When you experience a covered loss, you file a claim with the insurance company and they pay the claim under the terms of your policy.

What is Loss Control?

In simple terms, loss control is a method of mitigating hazards that could lead to a loss. This includes risks from fire and crime to chemical spills, slips and falls, auto accidents, cyber threats, and legal issues.

Loss controls include proactive measures like policies, procedures, training, and tools, like chemical safety software, that help reduce the frequency and severity of losses. Loss controls can also include data collection, organization, and visualization software that helps you spot trends or potential issues before they arise.

Loss control, or loss prevention, is an important part of keeping any effective risk management program successful and sustainable.

Now that we have definitions, let's look at a few specific examples of loss and loss control.

Examples of Loss & Loss Control

You’re probably already familiar with the concept of loss control, even if you haven’t referred to it by that name.

Imagine there’s been a burglary in your neighborhood, so you decide to install a monitored security system in your home. Because your new alarm system protects your family and property from damage (loss), it can be thought of as loss control.

One example of a loss that could occur in a research organization is a chemical spill or unintended reaction that triggers a Hazmat response. A good loss control for this situation would be a system that tells first responders exactly what hazards are present in a space because it helps them to get in and address the issues faster to mitigate damage.

Damage to a piece of capital equipment is another common type of loss. Training users on proper techniques, performing regular equipment certifications, and tracking maintenance schedules are all examples of loss controls that can help protect expensive laboratory equipment.

Finally, slip and fall injuries are a major risk. Losses related to slips and falls can range from minor wounds requiring medical attention to life-threatening injuries, lawsuits, and even death. These are common injuries when working with chemical inventory, and the conditions that lead to them are manifold. Keeping walkways clear of hazards, wearing slip-resistant footwear, and routinely inspecting workspaces for hazards are simple controls that can reduce the likelihood of slips and falls.

Why are Loss Controls Important?

As we said before, loss controls help minimize the potential for injuries, property damage, and other liabilities. By reducing the frequency and severity of covered losses, loss controls (and the EHS professionals who implement them) save insurance companies money. In turn, insurance companies reward policyholders with lower insurance premiums. It’s a win-win.

For example, many insurance companies offer a substantial discount on home insurance premiums for installing a monitored security system because it reduces the chances you’ll need to file a theft claim in the future.

Similarly,implementing safety training and laboratory safety software in your organization can result in significant savings on workers’ compensation and liability insurance.

Without loss controls, claims may occur more often than expected, or with greater severity. In this case, your insurance company may even raise your premiums or decide not to renew your policy. If you’re self-insured, then you are bearing the full brunt of the cost of a loss, which is often even more painful and expensive than dealing with an insurer.

Your Takeaway

Loss control is an insurance-approved strategy that can benefit every organization, regardless of size or industry.
Implementing loss controls can save your organization money by reducing your claims and insurance premiums.
Even if you are self-insured, the costs of a loss fall solely on your organization, and loss controls can have an even greater impact.
Effective loss control starts with evaluating your risks and understanding the likelihood those events will occur. Once you know your risks, you can work to identify controls to manage them proactively.

The easiest, and most accurate, loss controls are those done automatically. SciShield’s Chemical Safety Software was built by scientists, for scientists. The platform empowers organizations with a single, easy-to-use system that improves laboratory safety, increases efficiency, facilitates collaboration between Environmental Health and Safety (EHS)and scientists, and reduces scientist frustration. Leverage our scalable SaaS solution to meet your unique laboratory needs. Request a consultation with our team to learn more.

Did you know that SciShield is now a Certified Loss Control? Our customers are using our software to save money and protect their organization’s revenue - learn more.

Hazardous Chemical Management: What is it and Examples

Learn key loss control tactics for hazardous chemical management and why you should invest in chemical safety software.

Peek inside a lab on any given day, and you'll find scientists conducting research into medicine, pharmaceuticals, genetics, physics, geoscience, and engineering (to name only a few). You’ll see researchers handling cells, transferring chemicals, handling animals, and operating lasers.

For safety professionals, this presents a significant challenge. How do you keep a handle on all the people, activities, and hazards – all while preserving your sanity? The sheer volume and pace of data is enough to make your head spin.

Fortunately, there is a tool available that is designed specifically to exist in this fast-paced environment. In this article, we’ll show you how SciShield helps manage the chaos that is inherent in research.

Why is research so chaotic?

To understand why research is so chaotic (using an academic lab environment as an example), we need to back up a step. Let’s say you manage a research program with 50 groups. In each group, there are 8 researchers. Each researcher might encounter a number of different hazards: chemicals, glassware, sharps, laboratory animals, radiation, lasers, and so on.

Each individual hazard creates a number of compliance touchpoints. For example, a laser needs to be serviced and inspected, researchers need to receive appropriate laser safety training, and the proper protective eyewear needs to be provided.

In turn, each compliance touchpoint creates a number of individual data points. For example, inspection data points might include the date the inspection was conducted, the inspector’s name and information, findings, corrective actions, outstanding items, and recurring issues.

The table below shows how quickly all this information multiplies:

Now, let’s say one of these researchers moves to a new lab or group – a common occurrence. That one small change triggers a large downstream cascade of data. How do you see to it that all their information gets carried over? How do you ensure they have the appropriate training for the hazards they might encounter?

Running a safe and productive lab depends on your ability to keep up with the chaos and manage the data deluge effectively. Not only that, but in the event of an injury, accident, or incident, accurate information is essential. It’s your team must be able to go back and answer specific questions about what happened, where, why, and how often.

To do this effectively, you’ll need to move beyond spreadsheets, burdensome homegrown or legacy systems, and scattered filing cabinets, and start using a modern software system that can reliably collect, organize, and maintain all this data.

SciShield is designed to manage the chaos that is inherent in research

SciShield is different from other safety and compliance software because it is built by researchers and laboratory safety experts with one goal: create an effective, scalable solution that sustainably integrates safety compliance into lab and research operations.

Our management and product development teams have decades of experience in academic and pharmaceutical research, scientific software, education, healthcare, and aerospace industries. All that to say: we've seen what works (and what doesn't).

As we continue to build SciShield, we do so with a deep understanding of the challenges of the dynamic laboratory environment. We know that the system needs to be able to keep up with both the volume and velocity of data. SciShield does this in two key ways, which we’ll discuss below.

Active Directory Integration & Single Sign-On

First, SciShield uses Active Directory Integration to keep your researcher information current. In simple terms, Active Directory Integration means that SciShield connects to your human resources directory and uses that information to populate your users and groups within the system.

It’s an enormous and critical amount of data upkeep that suddenly disappears off your plate.

Once SciShield is linked to your human resources directory, users will automatically be added, updated, and removed. Whenever a new individual joins your organization, someone leaves, or their contact information changes, these changes will be reflected in the SciShield system. This saves you from having to manually update information and ensures that SciShield operates as a single source of truth for your organization.

When it comes to getting information into your system for your EHS team to leverage, SciShield has a secret weapon – Single Sign-On.

Single Sign-On eliminates a major stumbling block by allowing researchers to use preexisting login credentials, providing a seamless experience. It’s a rare thing to find a researcher who’s excited about entering safety and compliance data, but that’s exactly what needs to happen across the board for any laboratory safety software to succeed.

The effect? When a researcher has information they need to update and they go to your system, the scales tip towards “I’ll just take care of it now” and away from the perpetual excuse of “I’ll just do it later.”

Data hierarchy

Another way SciShield helps keep up with the chaos is by organizing your data in a systematic, intuitive way.

Data in SciShield is organized into Users, Labs/Groups, Spaces, Buildings, and Locations/Campuses. Unlike flat sets of rows and columns in Excel, SciShield’s data hierarchy makes it easy to visualize the relationships between individual users, groups, spaces, buildings, and campuses.

Here are a few examples of the types of information that is stored at each level:

User: contact information; associated lab(s) and space(s); authorized devices and equipment; training records; job activities; associated hazards.
Lab: lab members; job activities; hazards and inventories present in the entire space; equipment in use; inspection history; lab research overview; contact information for group leader and/or manager.
Building: contact information for building manager and address; all labs within the building; inspection history and findings; safety systems; equipment.

This intuitive structure enables safety leaders to locate information easily – no matter how chaotic things get. For example, if you want to see training compliance for a specific laboratory, you can simply navigate directly to that section of SciShield. Or, you can get to the same spot from a building view or user view.

Once there, as long as you have the appropriate permissions, you can easily find out the total amounts of every chemical stored in a specific laboratory, space, or building in a few clicks. This type of information is critical for emergency management and response.

Not only does this data hierarchy enable you find information faster, it also helps keep your data secure. With SciShield’s permissions system, you can easily decide which levels of information each user should be able to access and set appropriate permissions. In this way, SciShield ensures that people throughout your organization are only able to view or change information that is relevant to their role.

Your takeaway

We’ve covered a lot of ground, so here’s a quick recap:

Research environments tend toward chaos. For software to function well in this setting requires a unique set of considerations.
SciShield is designed specifically to exist within the dynamic laboratory environment.
The SciShield system succeeds where other solutions fail because of its use of Active Directory Integration, and its thoughtfully-designed data structure.

If you’d like to learn more about how SciShield can help you keep up with the chaos, let’s talk.

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Understanding SciShield - Keeping Up with the Chaos

How do you handle all the people, activities, and hazards at your organization? We’ll show you how SciShield manages the chaos that is inherent in research.

If it feels like your research program is seconds away from spinning out of control, you're not alone. For many institutions, finding a balance between research and safety is a never-ending struggle.

On the one hand, academic research thrives when it’s at the edge of chaos. Unorthodox requests are commonplace, and you often must bend over backwards to accommodate them whenever possible. On the other hand, safety programs rely on rules, structure, and order to mitigate risk and prevent harm.

In this article, we'll examine some of the reasons why balancing research and safety is so difficult (if you find yourself struggling to approach a specific issue, you can check out our article on solving open-ended problems). When university leaders and EHS professionals share a mutual understanding of the environment in which they’re operating, they are able to work together towards a better and more sustainable solution for both research and for safety.

The PI is always right

One reason researchers are given so much leeway has to do with the way institutional research programs – and institutions themselves – receive funding.

State- and federally-funded research grants are an important source of funding for many institutions. In 2013, the federal government invested $24.6 billion in research grants for higher education – a third of total federal spending on higher education programs, and the second largest spending category behind federal Pell grants (according to a Pew analysis). Additionally, states invested $10.1 billion in state research, agricultural, and medical education appropriations.

Even with such a significant investment, research awards are extremely competitive. Often, a PIs and researchers need to make dissatisfying compromises in the direction of their research in order to make discoveries that are “publishable” as opposed to the research that they find sincerely interesting or important. All told, the pressure on researchers to find ways to secure funding can be immense.

Of course, institutions rely on these grants as well.

With so much of their funding derived from sponsored research, institutions may be reluctant to place significant limitations on principal investigators and researchers. Supporting PIs in their work and accommodating their requests – however unorthodox– is paramount to ensure the financial stability of the institution. This means more than simply providing them with equipment and materials – it means giving them as much freedom as possible without putting them at risk.

Freedom of research matters

Scientific freedom is a prerequisite for successful research. The American Association for the Advancement of Science defines scientific freedom as “the freedom to engage in scientific inquiry, pursue and apply knowledge, and communicate openly.”

For PIs and researchers to do meaningful work, they need autonomy over their experiments. Too many rules and regulations can stifle discovery. Without room to take risks and pursue unconventional ideas, scientific integrity suffers. Therefore, researchers can quickly become resentful of compliance exercises that create unnecessary bottlenecks and interfere with their work.

At the same time, institutions have learned a hard lesson about the importance of safety. The consequences of prioritizing scientific freedom over safe science range from minor to life-altering injuries to loss of property, litigation, reputation damage, and in the most serious cases, catastrophic damage to an entire building or loss of life.

Can anyone really be surprised that researchers and safety leaders find themselves at odds as they attempt to secure and protect their interests? Safety leaders need order. In keeping with the Hierarchy of Risk, they want to eliminate risks before they ever materialize. Researchers, on the other hand, must aggressively hunt for new discoveries in order to successfully compete for grant awards in the increasingly competitive funding environment.

Science and safety can coexist

The challenge for safety professionals is to figure out how to impose order on the chaos of research without overly restricting it.

For one, institutional leaders, EHS experts, and researchers alike must recognize that it’s not an either/or proposition. Supporting discovery doesn’t have to mean abandoning safety or overlooking hazards. Being safe doesn’t mean you can’t perform the research you want to perform.

Research shows that safety interventions promote productivity through reduced absenteeism, as well as improved performance, creativity, and motivation. In the laboratory, thoughtfully designed safety programs can actually encourage autonomy and scientific exploration.

It is critical to equip researchers with the right tools, training, and resources to work safely and efficiently. The pace of the ever-changing research environment makes a thorough and effective safety support program particularly important – there’s a lot to keep up with, and it can quickly become burdensome if not handled properly.

Done right, safety shouldn’t inhibit scientific freedom – it should support it and help it reach a sustainable pace. Striking the balance between these two extremes isn’t easy, but it is necessary to bridge the gap between research and safety.

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Research and Safety – Chaos and Order

The PI is always right. It's largely due to the way institutional research programs – and institutions themselves – receive funding.

In part 1 of this series, we discussed some of the reasons EHS programs exist, and what they’re designed to protect. Universities – particularly those that rely on research programs to attract talent and funding – face a wide range of environmental, health, and safety risks.

Specifically, in part 1, we discussed why EHS can seem like such a burden, and how that sense is often a leading indicator that you may be dangerously disconnected from your EHS team’s efforts.

In many cases, your EHS team may be under-resourced and struggling, creating opportunities for risks to materialize and harm your people, finances, and reputation.

Let’s dive in to how EHS protects your institution from these three specific facets of risk.

People

Effective EHS programs protect faculty, staff, students, and visitors from injuries and illnesses.

While deaths in the lab are relatively rare, accidents and injuries are not. It doesn’t take much for a seemingly minor incident to escalate into something more serious.

For example, an accidental needlestick – a common injury in labs – can result in exposure to dangerous blood-borne pathogens. Additionally, needle stick injuries can often be leading indicators that there’s a safety issue with a process that could manifest again as a more severe incident.

EHS helps prevent these types of situations from occurring. When they do occur, EHS helps to ensure the individual gets the appropriate care. Afterward, EHS will do a retrospective on the incident (often relying on data from their safety management software) to identify any contributing factors that could have been prevented or avoided, and, if appropriate, implement changes.

Strong safety programs not only protect people from harm, they can also increase productivity. How? Researchers in a 2013 Nature survey reported that time and hassle were the biggest barriers to safety. This means that when safety activities were required, they took researchers away from valuable time on experiments and grant-writing activity. At SciShield, a productivity survey found that researchers spend 60.5% more time than necessary on safety administration tasks.

The purpose of EHS extends beyond simply preventing a disaster. It’s also important to recognize that students and staff who feel unsafe – or who have witnessed a traumatic event – are not in a position to maximize their efforts to learn or make scientific discoveries. By creating a safe and healthy environment, EHS helps reduce distractions and allows people to focus on their research.

Finances

Laboratory accidents happen more often than you might think, and even minor ones can be shockingly expensive. Direct medical costs such as emergency room visits and hospital stays are only a small part of the equation. Indirect costs such as lost productivity, administrative time, insurance increases, investigations, and OSHA fines and involvement often add up to 2-10 times the amount of direct costs (source 1; source 2). A single OSHA violation, for example, could cost your institution $13,260, while a willful or repeated violation could cost as much as $132,598. It’s tough to overstate how many expenses will come out of the woodwork when an injury occurs.

Even incidents that don’t result in injury can be costly. A chemical spill requiring a HAZMAT response or facilities work doesn’t come cheap. A laboratory fire can easily result in millions or tens of millions of dollars in property damage and significant downtime. This isn’t to mention the migraine-inducing challenges of having to relocate labs, source new equipment, find and contract skilled (and expensive!) lab construction firms, and re-certify a building or space for safe operation.

Effective EHS programs guard your organization against catastrophic financial losses, regardless of the cause. Research and experience suggest that organizations that invest in safety experience a return on their investment.

Reputation

Ask any PR expert and they’ll tell you: while it takes a vast sum of money and years of work to establish a reputable brand, it only takes a second to destroy it. Whether it’s an academic scandal, a shooting, a lab fire, or simply a fumbled response to a crisis, an unforeseen event can permanently tarnish your reputation. Years later, news outlets are still reporting on lab accidents that occurred at UCLA, Yale, and Texas Tech, despite their sincere efforts to make improvements.

Why is reputation so important? For one, it can make or break your university's ability to compete for the best students and faculty. According to a 2013 report by the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA, a good reputation is the top factor influencing students’ decision to attend a particular school. Reputation can also be the deciding factor in whether or not a parent sends their child to your school.

Because EHS improves safety performance and promotes environmental stewardship, it plays a major (if oft hidden) role in your university's reputation. A robust EHS program shines through in many downstream ways to show that you're serious about maintaining a safe and healthy campus environment. Developing safety policies, communicating hazard information, and coordinating a swift incident response are just a few of the ways that EHS can help you build trust and increase confidence in your school. Additionally, a smoothly-functioning EHS program will help your research program work that much better. When it comes to a complex, multifaceted research program, you want it to be firing on all cylinders, not tripping over itself.

Your takeaway

The key to guarding against risks is understanding them, and EHS helps you do just that. It shields students, staff, and visitors from hazards that can cause injuries or illness. It safeguards your finances against costly incidents. And it protects your hard-earned reputation from irreparable damage.

EHS is vitally important to your institution. Without the work of EHS behind the scenes, your institution would unequivocally suffer. Don't risk a hit to your institution's well-being – invest in EHS people, processes, and systems, and rest in comfort knowing that the foundation protecting your research enterprise is rock-solid.

What's the Point of Having EHS? Part 2 - People, Finances, and Reputation

Your EHS team may be under-resourced and struggling, creating opportunities for risks to materialize and harm your people, finances, and reputation

The health and safety of your students, staff, visitors, and community is vital to your institution’s success. No matter how good your course offerings, how talented your teaching staff, or how much funding you have, your institution cannot survive without a strong environmental, health, and safety (EHS) program.

EHS helps prevent injuries and illnesses. It strengthens and protects your brand reputation. And it prevents and mitigates costly financial harm to buildings, spaces, and equipment. According to OSHA, every $1 spent on EHS can save your institution $4 to $6.

Investing in EHS people, processes, and systems should be a priority for every institution. That’s especially true for schools that rely on their laboratory research programs to attract top talent and secure funding.

So why does it sometimes feel like EHS is just a big money sink, or something that holds your research program back?

In our experience, your feelings about your EHS program often come down to how well you can conceptualize the risks present at your institution, and how well your EHS team is equipped to address those risks.

If you don’t see your EHS team as a critical and valuable resource, that might be a leading indicator that you’re set up for an incident coming down the pike.

For every risk you can see in the lab, there are a dozen others hiding in plain sight (and even more hiding behind the scenes)

Laboratories are dangerous and risk-prone places. Sharp objects, electricity, and a mélange of harmful chemicals pose a threat at nearly every workstation. If people are handling animals or animal materials, there’s also the risk of bites, scratches, allergens, blood-borne illnesses, or other respiratory exposures.

How well your institution is able to understand and mitigate these risks will determine the success and sustainability of your research program. Even for small startups like growing biotechs, safety administration can quickly outgrow your current solutions.

However, understanding your risks can be a difficult task. Once you know the risks facing your institution, it’s not always obvious what to do about them.

If we’re being honest, unless you’re in EHS, you shouldn’t be getting bogged down in the minutiae of risk management – there are many aspects to making an institution run successfully, and the details of risk management can be a huge time sink.

But that doesn’t mean you can leave your risks unaddressed. And that’s where EHS comes in.

EHS protects your institution from risk

The main benefit of EHS programs is that they help identify risks before they cause an incident such as an injury, illness, environmental disaster, or costly harm to a building or piece of capital equipment. It’s like the old adage goes: “If you think safety is expensive, try an accident.”

EHS programs help you uncover and monitor hazards in your institution and develop a plan to control them or reduce them to an acceptable level. From there, they provide controls (like centralize software training and lab safety inspections) to reduce the chances of an injury or accident. They’re also responsible for ensuring that your institution complies with complicated safety and environmental standards.

What to do if you have trouble seeing the value of EHS

EHS has to handle risk both on a conceptual scale, and on a staggeringly granular scale, all the while working within the complex environment of laboratory operations.

EHS is a world of hyper-specific details. How can it not be, when two seemingly similar chemicals may have vastly different temperature-dependent explosive properties? Or when the addition of a dissection procedure may cause an illness in an unvaccinated researcher?

One good first step is to just take a member of EHS out for a cup of coffee and ask them some questions about their job and knowledge base. We think you may be surprised at how many expert details they handle, and it will help you form a more sincere appreciation for the specifics they address so you don’t have to.

Is your EHS program dangerously under-resourced?

With the level of granularity required of EHS programs, it’s no wonder that they get quickly bogged down with administrative work and data-gathering. Risk and compliance data in a laboratory environment is created and changes rapidly. While much of the data collected seems like it may not be necessary, we assure you that once you find yourself needing a precise answer to a specific question, there will be no doubt about how critical this data can be.

Research programs have grown far larger and more complicated than they were even 10 years ago. With these changes comes an exponential increase in the work that must be done to mitigate risk and ensure compliance. Unfortunately, the tools EHS once was able to rely on (such as pen and paper, excel, or a home-grown system) can no longer keep up.

Some EHS programs expend a shocking amount of time and effort just trying to stay abreast of the compliance data that needs to be gathered and tracked, let alone all of the mitigating actions, education programs, and inspections that must also be done.

Many EHS professionals feel like they’re struggling to keep their head above water, despite their admirable efforts to keep the individuals at your institution safe.

If you discover that your EHS team is under-resourced, it is essential to work with them, to understand their needs, and to ensure your research program can continue functioning sustainably in a safe environment.

In part 2, we look specifically at three major categories that your EHS team protects: your people, your finances, and your reputation. For now, let’s quickly recap:

Universities – and particularly those that rely on research programs to attract talent and funding – face a wide range of environmental, health, and safety risks to the sustainability of their operations.
The primary purpose of EHS is to identify, analyze, prioritize, and manage these risks. This should free you up to focus on big-picture items and area-specific goals instead of being bogged down in the details that EHS lives in.
Even though you might not be able to see it, there's a lot of hard work happening behind the scenes to create a safe and healthy environment for faculty, staff, students, and visitors. Occasionally, take a moment to really talk with members of your EHS team so you don’t lose sight of just how much they do.

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What's the Point of Having EHS? Part 1 - the Value

In our experience, your feelings about your EHS program come down to two things: how you conceptualize risks, and how your team is equipped to address them

Next:Reasons to Digitize & Centralize Laboratory EHS Data

Turnover is inevitable at any organization.

But it’s especially problematic for EHS departments, where workloads are heavy, skilled professionals are required, and critical information often only resides in the minds of the people leaving.

Employees often walk out the door with valuable knowledge about processes and specific company issues that can’t be replaced. Those left behind are forced to try to pick up the pieces and reassemble the puzzle. Sometimes, the pieces are missing and you may not even know it.

In this article, we’ll look at the true costs and risks of losing an EHS team member, retention strategies, and how to safeguard your organization’s institutional knowledge.

What is institutional knowledge?

Institutional knowledge is the combined experience, skills, processes, records, data, concepts, and wisdom held by company employees. You can think of it like your organization’s collective memory.

Sometimes institutional knowledge is stored in known, findable locations (such as a software system or spreadsheet) and accessible to others in the organization. Other times, this information is stored in paper files, sticky notes, or directly in someone’s head.

Institutional knowledge is essential to understanding how an organization operates and makes basic decisions. It also helps to maintain consistency and keeps the organization running smoothly across several generations of employees.

Watch out for “the bus factor”

Losing an employee is a scenario most employers don’t want to think about. But what if you found out that one of your employees got hit by a bus tomorrow?

It’s a concept known in software development as “the bus factor”: the number of employees who would need to be incapacitated before a project would be unable to proceed. For many organizations, that number is one.

Of course, there are many events that could cause a similar situation. It could be a retirement, vacation, someone getting fired, maternity leave, or promotion. When an employee leaves — voluntarily or not — loss of institutional knowledge poses a serious risk to operations.

Let’s look at some of the specific challenges organizations face when an EHS team member leaves.

What are some EHS-specific challenges when an employee leaves?

Turnover is challenging for any department, but losing an EHS team member comes with a specific set of challenges. EHS employees play a critical role in preventing harm, reducing risk, and supporting research logistics. Not only that, but the great ones form strong relationships with researchers and other employees over the course of their career, making them central to the organization’s safety culture. Here are just a few challenges to consider:

1. Recordkeeping:

Where (and how) does this person keep their records? Are they easily accessible to other team members? Are they even stored anywhere external to the person’s own mind? Siloed information represents a significant risk to your organization and your team’s efficiency.

2. Inspections:

What inspections is this person responsible for? What needs to be closed out? How frequently do certain spaces get inspected? Are there any problem areas or issues that need extra attention? It’s important to know these deadlines so an inspection doesn’t get overlooked.

3. Corrective actions:

Is this person responsible for implementing or enforcing any corrective actions? Where are they on the road to success? What are the next steps, and what problems are the corrective actions supposed to be addressing?

4. Communication:

How does this person communicate safety issues and updates to researchers and other employees? Do you have access to the appropriate contact lists or database? Do you know what messages were previously sent, or which ones are needed, and when, and to who?

5. New employee onboarding:

Do you have a training and onboarding plan in place? How will you pass along knowledge of processes and job tasks? Who will handle “overflow” work? Who has the time, resources, and knowledge to onboard the new person? From the point to when someone leaves to when their replacement is fully trained, the risks associated with their role can spike. Make sure you’ve got a plan in place to uncover, and address those risks in the interim.

How to retain EHS employees

Of course, the best way to avoid these problems is to do a better job of retaining EHS employees in the first place. Paying employees well, providing opportunities for growth and career advancement, providing necessary work resources, and offering benefits can go a long way toward employee retention. However, in most cases these factors will either be outside of your control or there may be another unavoidable reason employees leave — for example, in the case of a downsizing, a merger, or budget cuts.

There are some steps you can take to ensure that valuable employees stay on, though. One of the biggest reasons employees voluntarily leave is because they don’t feel valued. Lifeworks, the world’s largest employee assistance provider, found that three out of four employees who don't feel valued at work are seeking other job opportunities.

Other times, people don’t feel heard or supported. This can contribute to burnout — a factor that’s responsible for up to half of annual workforce turnover, according to HR professionals.

Finally, 92% of employees said that they would be more likely to stay with their job if their boss showed more empathy. That can be as simple as asking about their plans for the weekend or giving someone the afternoon off to take their child to the doctor.

While your actions may be limited, when you know you’ve got a team member who’s a critical contributor, it never hurts to make them feel included, appreciated, or valued. Sometimes, an employee will stay at a job just because they’ve got that one team member/friend who makes the grind worthwhile.

How to mitigate the risk of losing an EHS team member

Even if you do everything right, some employees will still leave. EHS is a field where skilled professionals are in high demand, and turnover isn’t unusual. Sometimes it may just be time to retire.

If you can’t persuade them to stay, there are still some steps you can take to prevent institutional knowledge from walking out the door with them. We’ll leave you with these tips:

The best way to protect institutional knowledge is to document it. Exhaustively, as much as possible. Have insight into what different people are responsible for to avoid those “unknown unknown” situations. Put procedures into place to ensure people regularly log the institutional knowledge they may be hoarding.
Make sure knowledge of processes and workflows is stored in a formal system that’s available across the organization. Enterprise EHS software is designed specifically for this purpose.
Don’t be fooled: just because information is “in a system” doesn’t necessarily mean it’s useful to others. Often, employees develop their own ad hoc systems that make sense to them but not to anyone else. (imagine going into your neighbor’s garage looking for a hammer — you wouldn’t necessarily know where to look).
Don’t wait until the retirement party to start planning. If you think you’ve got a colleague on the way out the door, start documenting the scope of their responsibilities and recordkeeping systems as soon as possible to ensure a smooth transition.

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The Not-So-Hidden Costs of Losing an EHS Team Member

Those left behind are forced to try to pick up the pieces and reassemble the puzzle. Sometimes, the pieces are missing and you may not even know it.

If you want to succeed as a safety leader, it’s not enough to focus solely on logistics and data management – you have to get good at “soft skills” as well.

To help you hone your craft, we’re writing a series of articles each highlighting a different soft skill. Today’s topic is getting better at hearing the word “no.”

How to handle a “no”

Picture this: You’ve come up with a great idea for a new training program. You’ve crunched the numbers, created the perfect PowerPoint, and delivered a pitch your boss simply can’t turn down.

You’re feeling confident — that is, until your boss utters the two-letter word you’ve been dreading: “No.” In a split second, your ego deflates like an old birthday balloon.

Rejection is never easy, but in the right light, it can be something positive. In fact, some of the top people in sales, business, and negotiation around the world will tell you that you should actually welcome the word “no”. It can be painful, but learning how to accept and even appreciate being turned down can help you move forward in your career.

1. Get past the initial sting of rejection

Regardless of whether it’s personal or professional, rejection hurts. It touches on one of our deepest biological fears, and can actually trigger the primal fight-or-flight response. In short, our brains are hardwired to lash out or run from rejection.

Before you act, take a minute to just sit with your emotions. The simple act of taking a deep breath can shift your brain from a primal stress response to a more rational state of mind. After this, it’s much easier to think past that animal part of your brain that’s panicked and impeding thoughtful analysis.

2. Mull it over

Once you’ve recovered from the initial shock, take some time to reflect on what went wrong. Was it a timing issue? Are people too busy on other projects?

Also think about how you presented your idea. Did you explain it clearly? Was it well-oriented to the audience? Did you connect your idea to the decision-maker’s goals? In the case of evaluating a chemical inventory system, for example, there may be issues present that someone else sees that you do not.

It’s never easy, but taking the time to understand why you were turned down will benefit you in the long run. You’ll learn how to avoid these pitfalls in the future, and maybe even find an opportunity to fix an issue and try again.

3. Understand their perspective

Of course, it’s possible to do everything right and still get rejected. Maybe you had a fantastic idea, but it doesn’t align with your department or organization’s goals. Or perhaps there are other higher-priority issues that demand resources and attention. If your boss shoots down your idea for a new training program, for example, it might be because they are thinking about how much time will be required to carry it out (time that will also be taking you away from other efforts).

Instead of getting defensive, try to adopt the other person’s perspective. Better yet, ask them for feedback on why your idea didn’t work, and when you do, make sure you're actively listening. A series of studies showed that trying to imagine another person’s perspective doesn’t always work (in fact, it can backfire). Instead of perspective-taking, then, you might need to do some perspective-getting.

By looking at things from a different point of view, you’ll gain a better understanding of why they said “no” in the first place — and again, perhaps develop a better way to approach the problem.

4. Move forward

As we said before, rejection isn’t always a bad thing. Getting turned down for a promotion might be the push that's needed to start your job search and find an employer who values your talents. Or, having your idea shot down might force you to come up with an even better solution — one you wouldn't have thought of before.

Some of the most successful entrepreneurs — including Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Arianna Huffington, Jeff Bezos, Walt Disney, and Thomas Edison — were rejected many times before they found success.

Instead of dwelling on rejection, here’s what successful people do: they look at each defeat as a failed experiment. When a scientist performs an experiment, they learn from each result — whether successful or not. If one thing doesn’t work, they simply move on and try something else. This test-and-learn approach can help you see each setback as a learning experience instead of a catastrophic failure. If you're having a hard time figuring out a good next forward step, we've got a great article on solving open-ended problems.

Your takeaway

Hearing the word “no” is never easy, but following these tips can help soothe the sting. In fact, you might discover that this minor bump in the road led you in a much more productive direction.

Get past the initial sting. Take a deep breath to quell the mental and physical effects of the Fight or Flight response that can be triggered from rejection.
Mull it over. A “No” can mean a few different things, and it can be helpful to understand exactly why this particular proposition was rejected.
Understand their perspective. Better yet, ask them for their reasoning in a non-confrontational way. This can even lead to an improved, more trusting relationship.
Move forward. While it can be tough, don’t let your “No’s” hinder you. Take what constructive things you can from the “No” and use it to climb to bigger and better heights.

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Soft Skills for Safety - Why It's Good to Hear No

Rejection is never easy, but in the right light, it can be something positive. In fact, some of the top people in sales, business, and negotiation...