Responsible Reflections Blog

Tuesday night’s dramatic results capped off a historic election season. For the first time in a decade, the White House and Congress will again be led by Republicans. And while the coming weeks will unveil much about President-Elect Donald Trump’s agenda, NACD will be closely monitoring developments to ensure that our industry’s priorities are heard within the incoming administration.  

You should be. The whole process is exhausting. The ads on television and radio, the phone calls at dinner, the mudslinging at stump speeches and during the debates are all over the top. Polling shows Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are the two most disliked presidential nominees in modern American history. And to be honest, I certainly understand why many people aren’t interested in voting. But let me tell you why you should reconsider if you fall into this camp.

Last month, I had the opportunity to attend Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business Duke Management Program on behalf of NACD. The program, sponsored by Datacor, Inc. for NACD participants and held over a 4-day period in Durham, NC, focused on explaining the science of management by use of real-world examples and interactive activities. Taughhttp://www.datacor.comt by Fuqua professors, the Duke Management Program specifically concentrated on managing people and performance, choice, conflict, power, and systems.

Anyone in the chemical distribution industry can tell you how important health, safety and environmental practices are to their companies. The protection of our employees and surrounding communities is critical to our work, and that’s why NACD Responsible Distribution^® plays such an outsized role in raising the bar for our industry. While there are obvious benefits from participating in Responsible Distribution, like having a safety record that is nearly twice as good as all manufacturing combined, there are also a number of lesser-known positives that this program provides NACD members. 

The freight rail industry is critically important to U.S. economic competiveness. Industries like chemical distribution that rely heavily on rail have long fought for a stronger Surface Transportation Board equipped with the tools it needs to effectively balance the concerns of the rail industry and its customers. The recently-released “Proposed Rulemaking to Adopt Revised Competitive Switching Rules” illustrates precisely the type of common-sense reforms needed to ensure companies that rely on rail have more than one option when shipping and receiving product. 

Earlier this year, I highlighted the fact that NACD is celebrating the 25th anniversary of NACD Responsible Distribution^®. Since that time, I have heard from many of you that Responsible Distribution is a significant investment of time and manpower that pays even greater dividends. The safety and security benefits of the program are unprecedented. However, in many cases, the benefits go well beyond these core values, including improvements in productivity, reliability, customer relations, supply chain management and practically every other facet of chemical distribution.

Have you ever gotten into a routine that felt old and tired, or just felt like you were barely making it through your “to do” list, let alone plan for the future and strategize on more efficient ways to run your division or company? We’ve all felt the stress of a monotonous routine, email overload, and some of us, even job burnout. In those moments, it’s important to reflect on the work we’re doing and the ways we can maintain our mental resilience. In doing so, we can learn to manage the stress of an increasingly hectic work life.

Last week, I had an interview with a reporter who was writing an article on innovative tools and resources the chemical industry is leveraging to ensure their employees are up-to-speed with the most current best practices and regulatory requirements. She told me that the article would explore a company that sells an app for safety training, another organization that recently released a virtual reality safety training course, and NACD’s online educational platform NACD U. It’s clear that organizations are looking to develop new resources that utilize technology to train their employees in a way that is digestible for these employees and ultimately saves the company time and money—that’s exactly why we launched NACD U last year.