​David Hanson CSP
Southern Oregon Chapter President
 
President’s April Message
 
There are some good things happening in our chapter this spring. On May 12, we are holding a special free three-hour Professional Development Workshop event in conjunction with the Cascade ASSP chapter and the Oregon TWH Alliance. This course is targeted especially to occupational safety and health professionals, although occupational health nurses, physicians, and wellness and human resource professionals will also benefit from attending. Our instructors for this event are Dede Montgomery from OHSU and Liz Hill with SAIF Corporation. Look at the information about this event on our website under the conference tab. Seating for this event is limited, and we expect interest in this event from all over the Pacific Northwest. We are promoting the event to the Southern Oregon region first. After not being able to do our PDC last October, I am delighted that we are able to offer this professional development workshop this spring. Please join us!
 
I would like to thank our local sponsors that help us provide great programming. This includes our annual safety conference, safety committee university and other events throughout the year. Our sponsors are Boise Cascade, Timber Products Company, Asante, Knife River, Redwood Safety Association, Oregon SHARP Alliance, Oregon Columbia Chapter of AGC, D2000 Safety, Oregon OSHA, Light Symphony, EHS Maven, SAIF Corporation, Sweed Machinery, Duro-Last Roofing, Rogue Valley SHRM, Concepts in Advertising, First Response CPR Training, Mallory Safety Supply,& Providence Medical Group. Without contributions and support from these sponsors, our efforts would be severely hampered. If you know anyone with these organizations, take a little time to thank them again from all of us at Southern Oregon ASSP.

To Register for the Free Total Worker Health Professional Development Workshop, click below:
Total Worker Health Workshop Registration
 
To download the flyer for the event, click below:
Total Worker Health Marketing Flyer

Sincerely,
David Hanson
 
 
Stay safe!
 
David Hanson, CSP
President, ASSP – Southern Oregon Chapter
Senior Safety Management Consultant, SAIF Corporation
 
David has an expertise building dynamic safety teams and developing high-performing safety cultures. He spent 18 years at Timber Products Company as a Supervisor and Safety Coordinator and facilitated continued certification into Oregon OSHA's Voluntary Protection Program (VPP).

​  As we do each year, the chapter holds an election to place volunteers into positions that help the chapter run according to the ASSP guidelines.  We are very grateful for these volunteers because many hands make light work and, quite frankly, our chapter has a lot of resourceful members who bring great ideas to the direction of our chapter.  The slate as posted in this month’s newsletter is put together by a committee of volunteers and is submitted for your review.  The committee nominates candidates for the open positions on the board and it includes movement of persons already on the board.   In the month of May, at the chapter meeting, the membership will be asked to vote on the slate.  If the slate is confirmed by the members, it becomes final and the candidates assume the slated positions on the first of July.  If you have any questions about the slate, please contact Chris Lawrence via the chapter website or directly. 

​A healthy organization does a better job of solving and preventing problems. One of the best ways to measure the health of an organization is to look at how it responds to failure. When a strain is placed on an organization, its ability to be proactive, flexible, and achieve better solutions says everything about how successful the organization will be. Consider some concepts that I think are key attributes of a healthy organization.
 
An organization that fails well:
 

• Understands that human error is normal and predictable.
• Understands that the organization shares the responsibility for failures.
• Succeeds as a team and fails as a team.
• Seeks to understand the mistakes and learn from failures before trying to fix them.
• Looks at the organizational context surrounding a failure for opportunities to understand what happened and how to improve.
• Does not allow one person or department to shoulder the entire responsibility for a failure or mistake.
• Does not ignore problems out of fear of making people feel bad.
• Encourages and thanks team members who speak up when there is a problem.
• Does not hesitate to support employees that need more help to be successful.
• Is introspective about the messages that are sent to employees and supervisors and how they will be interpreted.
• Looks for ways to be resilient to human error.
• Does not blame and punish individuals that make mistakes.
• Does not use inadequate policies and documentation as an excuse for failure.
• Provides positive feedback to employees and supervisors when things go well.
• Does not wait for a failure to provide constructive feedback and is not afraid of tough conversations.

 
 
I hope there are some things here that can help you and your organizations. Some of these things take a lifetime to keep working on. It’s hard work, but it is worth it.
 
David Hanson, CSP