Companies participating in the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s Voluntary Protection Program (VPP) are treated to an enhanced experience, as the agency increasingly supports those that consider safety a core value.

In the VPP, management, labor and OSHA establish cooperative relationships at workplaces with a comprehensive safety and health management system. OSHA’s program sets performance-based criteria for a managed safety and health system, invites sites to apply and then assesses applicants against these metrics.

What’s the VPP?

OSHA began efforts to modernize the VPP in 2023, talking to internal and external stakeholders to find ways the agency could improve, streamline and expand the use of safety and health management systems—“the keystone of the program,” said Sherman Williamson, director of the Office of Partnerships and Recognition within OSHA’s Directorate of Cooperative and State Programs.

“We found that the program is very popular in its current state, and that most of the changes that people suggested really fit better into some other programs,” Williamson said. “But for VPP, we also decided to improve the experience for both participants and the special government employees that help us run the program.”

OSHA already had made efforts to improve customer experience for some time, but the agency is now ramping those up, he said. Participants are sent customer experience surveys after different stages of the process, and OSHA is now expanding some of those surveys “to try to find out where some of the pain points are for customers, so we can try to lessen the unnecessary burden,” he said.

The agency also wanted to improve the online experience for VPP participants, including the systems that enable companies to apply for the program and (for some) submit an annual self-evaluation.

“We’re looking at having some type of recognition of sites that go above and beyond VPP by providing us with multiple sites or by having extremely low rates or being long-term participants,” Williamson said. “We also want to recognize companies that are very active in VPP by promoting the program and providing engaged special government employees who assist in on-site evaluations or other VPP work.”

Special government employees are qualified industry volunteers from participating sites who work alongside OSHA and are funded by their companies to participate.

Mike Starner, NECA’s executive director of outside line safety, explained that VPP participants are exempt from OSHA programmed inspections while they maintain their VPP status. 

Yet, during OSHA’s stakeholder meetings to determine how to enhance VPP, companies participating in the program “surprisingly” said that having fewer on-site inspections didn’t matter to them as much—they actually liked participating in VPP for other reasons, including for the reputational benefits, Williamson said.

“Those companies that participate in VPP tend to be some of the most recognizable companies in the country,” Williams said. “They are also the ones that have a reputation for being very proactive within their safety and health programs. That reputation does tend to have somewhat of a halo effect, as it just improves people’s perception of those companies.”

Companies get more benefits, including the ability to visit other participants’ sites to learn about their best practices, especially ones that also excel in safety and health.

“You get a lot of cross-pollination of ideas on how to improve sites,” he said.

Separate from the VPP is OSHA’s longest running strategic partnership, the Electrical Transmission and Distribution Partnership.

“The Strategic Partnership Program is another voluntary program, and you never get a better chance to get OSHA’s ear in a nonconfrontational situation,” Williamson said. “It really is a voluntary cooperative program.”

Advantage for contractors

MYR Group Inc. is a holding company of specialty electrical construction service providers. Two of its 13 subsidiaries have district locations that have been OSHA VPP Star certified since 2008, said Jim Foley, vice president of safety for the Thornton, Colo.-based company.

Subsidiary Sturgeon Electric Co., Henderson, Colo., a commercial and industrial group and transmission distribution group, has attained VPP Star status. The second subsidiary, The L.E. Myers Co., Savoy, Ill., has transmission and distribution operations in Chattanooga, Tenn., and Decatur, Ill., and is also VPP Star certified for both sites, with the Decatur location being approved earlier this year.

“It’s a verification that we have an exemplary safety program,” Foley said. “Most of our clients are familiar with VPP, and they realize the value. It actually came into play with one of our clients that we currently work for. One of the reasons that we ended up getting the work was because we were VPP certified.”

Participating in VPP is “a big deal for us,” he said. “We know how hard it is to qualify and then get approved for it. We welcome any subsidiary that wants to take on the challenge and try to qualify and get certified, as it puts us in good standing with OSHA and with our clients.”

With the VPP enhancement, OSHA is also stepping up its promotion of quality safety and health management systems, Starner said.

“You’ll hear them talking a lot now about how safety equals value—and that’s what they’re looking for from employers,” Starner said. “It’s not just about compliance with regulations and it’s not just having no occurrences or incidents. It’s the proactive things that your company is doing to demonstrate that you have safety as a core value.”

In the past, companies would say that safety is their priority, but many are now promoting safety as a core value, and something that they “will never sacrifice for anything else,” he said.

Labor and management benefits

“Participating in VPP gives them a pathway to demonstrate to the world that they have world-class safety and health management systems that are proactively managing hazards,” Starner said. “They’re involving workers in the process and management is committed to it. Year over year, you’re seeing improvements in these companies—and not just rates, but with the culture, how these companies approach safety.”

It’s also good with labor, because one of the requirements for VPP is that if a company has a unionized workforce, the union has to be involved in the participation, Starner said. “It’s not just for the employer—there are things that are in it for the worker, too.”

“This whole idea of shared responsibility, something that OSHA holds pretty dear, is the only way we’re going to get to where we want to go,” he said. “Management and labor must come together to identify workable solutions to our issues. The VPP is one of those ways that you can easily demonstrate that.”  

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