The Safety Firm

08/23/2026

The PPE program that was designed around a table

I once worked with a company that had experienced too many injuries. Leadership decided the answer was to completely revamp the personal protective equipment program.

So the leaders and supervisors gathered around a table, brought in a PPE vendor, reviewed the options, chose the equipment, picked sizes they hoped would work for everyone, and placed the order.

Notice who was missing from that table: the people actually doing the work.

When the new PPE arrived, employees were told, “Throw the old stuff away. This is what we’re wearing now.”

It did not go well.

Some of the equipment reduced dexterity. Some did not fit correctly. Some was more protection than the task required, which made it uncomfortable and got in the way of doing the job.

The issue was not that the company wanted to protect its people. The issue was that they made a decision about the work without involving the workers.

**Bobbi says…..

……..PPE is not a purchasing decision. It is a job-design decision.

A better process starts with asking the people closest to the work:

- How are people getting hurt — cuts, burns, loss of grip, impact, exposure?
- What task is creating the hazard?
- What protection is actually needed?
- Can employees trial appropriate options and give feedback before the company commits?

When employees help select the equipment they must wear, you get better fit, better function, better buy-in, and a much better chance the PPE will actually be used as intended.

Safety programs fail when they are built around a table with no understanding of what happens on the floor.

Talk to the people doing the work. They are not the last step in the process. They should be part of the design.

**Question for safety leaders:** When was the last time your frontline employees had meaningful input into a PPE decision?

08/21/2026

OSHA's 2025 annual report shows that falls, struck-by incidents, and caught-in/between hazards continue to account for over 60% of construction fatalities.

Guess what? This may as well be a report from 2015 because it's the same freaking top three as a decade ago!!

The hazards haven't changed. The question we should all be asking is why the programs addressing them still aren't working.

Bobbi Says….. if your safety program hasn't reduced your top 3 hazards in three years, you do not have a program - you have a placeholder.

08/20/2026

The September Safety Program Accelerator cohort closes August 29.

12 modules. CSPA certification. 97% recommend rate.

If you've been on the fence, this is the week to decide.

Register at thesafetyfirm.com/spa.

Bobbi Says: …..

……the best time to fix your safety program was last year. The second best time is now.

08/19/2026

AI can help you start faster. It can't replace your judgment (this assumes you have some 😉 ), your floor knowledge, or your leadership.

I think most safety professionals understand that reality at this point.

New AI Bobbi Short is out today:

'What AI Can —and CAN NOT DO — For Your Safety Program'

The optional AI track in the September SPA is built around that exact idea: practical free tools, woven into the work students are already doing, with no extra assignments and no change to CSPA requirements.

08/18/2026

Volume 2, Issue 8 of the Bobbi Says Weekly Report hits today.

This week: the real cost of waiting to fix your safety program.

Free at thesafetyfirm.com.

08/16/2026

I once worked with an organization that had gone 847 days without a recordable incident. Of course they were proud of it, and naturally, leadership celebrated it.

And then, on day 848, someone got hurt. The investigation revealed something uncomfortable: the streak had become the goal.

People were under pressure not to report.

A number on a board is not a safety culture.

Bobbi Says…..

if your safety metric is a streak, you're measuring the wrong thing.

08/13/2026

"Human error."

I've read that phrase cited as the cause on more incident investigations than I can remember. And nearly every time, it meant the same thing: the investigation stopped before it got anywhere useful.

The problem with human error as a finding is that it isn't wrong, it's just not actionable.

A person did make a mistake. Now what? You retrain them, maybe you write them up, you add a line to the toolbox talk, and you close the file. Six months later somebody else makes the same mistake in the same spot, and you write "human error" again.

I think there are four questions to ask before you let an investigation close:

1. Would a different person, with the same training, on the same shift, under the same time pressure, have done the same thing? If the answer is probably yes, you're not looking at a people problem.

2. Was the safe way also the slower, harder, or more uncomfortable way? People take the path that gets the job done. If your safe path is more effort, it is competing with production, and it is losing.

3. Did this person know the rule, or did they know it the way people know rules — vaguely, from an orientation two years ago?

4. Has anyone actually watched this task get performed, or do we only know how it's supposed to be performed?

None of that is the soft approach. Blaming the worker is the soft approach. It costs nothing, changes nothing, and lets everyone go back to work.

If you fix the conditions, you can stop having to fix the people.

There's an AI Bobbi short version of this if you'd rather watch than read: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/xgX1gE1M5-8

FREE GUIDE - The 7 Safety Gaps Most Companies Don't Know Are Costin...

08/12/2026

Bobbi Says…..

Training your employees once a year and calling it a safety program is like changing your smoke detector battery once a decade and calling it fire prevention.

08/11/2026

Volume 2, Issue 7 of the Bobbi Says Weekly Report hits today.

This week: what SPA graduates actually say — and why nearly 100% recommend it.

Free at thesafetyfirm.com.