As we embark into a new year with new objectives and goals, the landscape of safety could be changing (whether for better or for worse depends on who you ask). With the election of a new president and both houses of Congress controlled by the same party, opportunities exist for things to happen fast. 

This could be in the form of a repeal of various rules and regulations, a slow-down of inspections or countless regulatory moves that could potentially undermine your safety and health objectives. (For more on these projections, check out “The Shifting Sands of Government Standards: 2025 OSHA Outlook” in the February 2025 issue of ELECTRICAL CONTRACTOR.)

Traditionally, and from only a safety perspective, it is common for those in the Republican party to support less regulation and lean toward supporting management objectives, and Democrats focus more on worker protections and ensuring there is either more regulatory oversight or new rules promulgated that focus on worker safety.

Same Safety priorities

But the real question is this: does the party in charge really influence your outlook, passion and drive to provide a safe working environment for those you are responsible for? The simple answer should be no! As a safety leader, your number one objective is to ensure the organization is protecting its most valuable asset—its employees—and complying with rules and regulations. By doing so, your focus is not on the external factors you cannot control, but internally on what you can do to maintain a culture of safety. 

If you look at the last several political administrations, you will see that regardless of their party, the safety landscape remains the same. Yes, there may be an increase or decrease of inspections or emphasis on a particular standard or rule, but for the most part it is business as usual. Safety is nonnegotiable and apolitical. 

That’s not to say that we, as safety leaders, should not be involved in rulemaking, standard interpretations and discussions with those who have an agenda different than ours. Safety’s involvement in these initiatives is essential to ensuring that outcomes protect workers and enable the organization to conduct business in a manner that does not adversely impact its operations. 

Working together

If we look at this from a personal growth perspective, it should be one of our key performance indicators when setting up yearly goals: “Continue to seek/listen/provide input that differs from our own and assist in educating all parties regarding our business operations and its safety impact.” 

Working together, be it with labor and management, regulators and industry or all parties together, produces the best outcomes for all. You will not always agree on all things, and there will be times when you may have to compromise, but in the end those tireless efforts pay off. Having an open mind and understanding where others are coming from on an issue provides you with a greater view of the issue overall. 

Keys to success

I’ve talked about three keys to successful outcomes in previous articles. (See “A Gold Mine of Information” from the March 2021 issue of LINE CONTRACTOR, for one.) Share with workers what the objective is, why you’re doing it and how you’re going to accomplish the task together. 

By doing this, you’ve outlined a clear picture of the task at hand and opened the door for input from others. 

The end result will be that all parties believe they have had valuable input in the outcome, which will help ensure a smoother transition in implementing whatever that may be.

So as we look forward to a new year in safety, remember something that I have learned over my long career in the safety field: we achieve more together.

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