Workplace safety starts from the top down at an organization, but it impacts everyone. That’s why Amanda Rawls urges company leaders to engage employees and seek their input to establish a company-wide safety culture.
Rawls is an EHS district director at KPA, an EHS software and on-site consultation service for a wide range of businesses. She has been in the industry for over two decades, and since starting at KPA 16 years ago, Rawls has completed more than 2,000 EHS compliance evaluations, written 27 Spill Prevention, Control, and Countermeasure Plans, and progressed into leadership roles. She currently manages a team of consultants boosting the safety programs of automotive industry clients.
A prized worker at KPA, Rawls has been recognized as Team Leader of the Year, District of the Year, and an annual Core Value Winner. She has also been the Field Operations Executive Spotlight winner and received a Core Value nomination more than 40 times.
To learn more about Rawls and her take on industry issues, please read the Faces of EHS interview below:
Q: How did you get your start in the field?
While I was pursuing my Master’s of Environmental Management (MEM) at Texas Christian University (TCU), a professor connected me to a part-time job at a Dallas-based EHS consulting firm. I had just taken a course on Phase I site assessments, and the job gave me the opportunity to write them in the real world. That was my first stepping stone: from learning about consulting to actually consulting real-world clients.
From there, my work writing site assessments turned into asbestos inspections, which led to industrial hygiene sampling, risk assessments, disaster response, and more. The classroom setting is great for establishing base knowledge, but no one knows how to do any of this until they get experience in the real world. My experiences built on each other, and soon I was a full-fledged safety professional.
But career growth never happens in a vacuum. While at TCU, my favorite professor gave me the guidance and empowerment I needed to shape my safety career. To pay that forward, I’m helping with a Women in Leadership Program at the University of Colorado – Colorado Springs. I’ve also joined the Women’s National Conference and will be attending the Texas Women’s Conference in October 2024. I want to help cultivate the next generation of women leadership in any industry, but particularly in safety.
Q: Who has been your biggest influence in the industry?
Becky Richards, the TCU professor who initially gave me a chance. She was the only other woman safety professional that I knew at the time. She owned her own company. She consulted, taught, and traveled. She was thoughtful and practical: She invited her students to join her in the field to learn how to take samples and log a chain of custody. She taught us practical skills that we could use outside of the classroom. She put me on a path to where I am today, and she was someone I wanted to emulate in almost every way.
Q: What’s your best mistake, and what did you learn from it?
My best mistake was not speaking up at the right moments. Early in my career, I had meetings in which I hesitated to vocalize my viewpoint, ask questions, or do anything that I thought would interrupt the flow of the discussion. I thought I was being polite.
I quickly learned that not asking questions is not me. I am typically a “hand-raiser,” and I need to stay true to that.
Safety ideas come from anyone. You don’t need to be labeled a CSP to have a valuable opinion on important safety solutions, like “Why can’t we sweep up the metal shavings that have led to slips on the shop floor?” Now, I ask questions when I have them: “Why are we doing things this way?”; “How do you do this job?”; “Is there a better way to do this?”
From correcting my mistake, I’ve learned people love to talk about their tasks and their work. You just need to ask them. Sometimes, the newest perspective is the most important.
I’ve also learned to trust my gut and be a good listener—both to others and to my own inner voice. To build a culture of safety you need context. And to find context, you need to ask the right question and listen to the response.
Q: What are some of the biggest EHS issues at your organization?
In the consulting world, the most important conversations we have with clients are about safety program ownership: Who owns it at their organization?
We are consultants, but this is their safety program. We’re here to help, guide, and answer questions. But day-to-day, it’s their managers that must take action about what we discuss.
Management participation is necessary. Hiring consultants doesn’t solve day-to-day issues. As we manage thousands of safety programs at multiple worksites across a variety of different industries, we empower organizational leaders to take ownership of their safety programs.
Q: What’s your favorite and least favorite part about working in the industry? Would you change anything?
My favorite part is the people. That’s why most of us are in the industry: to make a positive difference in the lives of the people around us. Realistic projects breed realistic, high-impact results. I like teaching people (at all management levels, from laborers to executives) the “why” behind their safety processes.
I love helping people find their “I got it” moment. When I hear that our work helped promote positive change at a client organization, it energizes me for my next project or engagement.
My least favorite thing is ambiguity or the feeling of complacency. So many folks talk about how safety is important, but don’t act on it. Lip service is an easy way to aggravate a safety professional—you can’t promise what you can’t deliver. Lack of follow-through will kill even the most well-intentioned safety initiatives and harm safety culture.
Incremental change is the antidote to complacency. Small, positive changes can lead to meaningful impact, which leads to a trend, which leads to a new expectation for safety.
Every safety program can create small, incremental changes. But managers need to be honest about what’s possible and what’s necessary for their business. It’s okay to feel overwhelmed, but it’s not okay to use that as a reason to avoid action, especially when changes can be low-lift and low-cost: a conversation, a poster, an updated SOP.
At the end of the day, the easiest way to make a positive change in an organization’s safety culture is through building better communication pathways with employees.
Q: What are your thoughts on safety culture? How can company leaders make safety a value within their organization?
I always recommend replacing “safety culture” with “safety expectation.” That makes it feel less like a buzzword and more like a tangible piece of your organization’s operating processes.
Some questions for company leaders: Is safety on your meeting agendas? Do your employees hear any safety statistics? Is safety top-of-mind when adopting a new technology or process improvement? Or, is it more of an afterthought or a “check the box” exercise?
Generally, employees have no idea how well their safety program is doing. That means they have no reason to care.
But if they hear about safety stats on company-wide calls from the C-suite team, learn new trainings in weekly meetings with managers, and have good habit reminders incorporated into part of their daily routine, then it becomes much harder to ignore.
Safety needs to be talked about at every level of the management team, but it also requires input from the employees close to the work itself. Combined, these types of conversations create change.
Q: What safety concerns or issues do you think need more prioritization in EHS programs?
Employee training. It’s the biggest, easiest, and most challenging task for any safety manager. It’s a requirement for employees to be trained because we know employees will make better decisions when they’re trained.
But organizing training is challenging. Do you do it on-site or online? Do you knock it out all at once or train piecemeal? Do you need to update your training content? What’s the best process to monitor employee training status? How do you communicate when training is due and how to complete it?
Training is a foundational piece of a safety program. But it’s so easy to shift it to the back burner when other projects take up space.
Q: What will be the impact of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) principles on the EHS industry?
Awareness.
For example, no one thinks about how much water bottles cost a business: the thousands supplied to customers at a car dealership, the millions of dollars spent on single-use water bottles, alternative uses for space that pallets of water take up in a building, the labor cost required to pay someone to move and carry and stock those heavy pallets of water.
An ESG report would list water bottles as an item with an associated direct and indirect cost, and employees would be very surprised to learn what that tiny amenity is costing their business.
And that’s just a small example of what can be changed with more awareness of ESG principles and practice.
Q: How will new safety technologies influence the work being done by EHS professionals?
My favorite safety technology is basic EHS software, which improves almost every facet of the work done by safety professionals.
Safety software makes it easier to encourage employees to complete safety trainings with push notifications, measure compliance and follow-ups, create customized posters instantly with QR codes, auto-populate OSHA paperwork, and more.
Half of our job is measuring results. Then, we analyze and make decisions that make a difference. As a safety professional, that software helps alert me to make faster and more informed decisions in my day-to-day job. Whether it’s an instant update when a serious incident is logged or a daily briefing on reported metrics vs. safety goals, I get a more holistic picture with the right safety software at my fingertips.
Q: What are you most proud of?
I’m most proud of the great work of our 16-person risk management team and dealership partners, which include Group 1 Automotive, Hendrick Automotive, and the Sewell Automotive group. In 2023, we helped over 15,000 automotive dealerships across the country improve safety standards through rigorous audit processes and regulatory assessments. By promoting incremental change with safety policies and projects at the management level, we help leave a lasting impact on the employees. I like to see the results of those projects and how those successes trickle down to technicians on the shop floor.
Q: Do you have any advice for people entering the EHS profession?
Stay curious. And don’t get discouraged. Safety is not a race and there is no finish line. It’s ongoing, so know that solutions and results will not always come quickly. That’s okay.
Changing a safety culture takes time. But it also takes persistent, optimistic people—and that’s us.
Are you or a colleague an EHS professional interested in being profiled for the Faces of EHS series? Please contact Joe Bebon at JBebon@BLR.com.