For NACD and our members, the spirit of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA) Safe + Sound campaign is felt year-round – ensuring the health and safety of employees is embedded into the fabric of everything we do. That’s never been clearer to me than now. Due to the coronavirus pandemic, workplace safety guidelines may look different than they did a year ago, but the swift adjustments that our members have made over the last several months underscore the importance of our longstanding commitment to making continuous improvements and always putting safety first.
We’re proud to partner with OSHA each year in promoting its annual Safe + Sound Week campaign to recognize the successes and continued advancement of workplace health and safety programs. This year, the week marks a great time to reflect on what the chemical distribution industry has accomplished and the importance of enhanced safety initiatives in the wake of a public health crisis.
As an essential industry, chemical distributors continued to safely warehouse, blend, and deliver the chemicals used to make products needed to address the national public health emergency and keep America running this year. In order to accomplish this, every corner of operations from the warehouse to the boardroom was supported by Responsible Distribution safety and enhanced health practices, confirming the value of this industry environmental, health, safety, and security (EHS&S) program that has long guided our members’ workplace safety protocols and minimized environmental impacts.
While chemical distributors have safely continued their critical work, the workplace itself looks different for all of us. Many employees have shifted to working from home, and jobs that cannot be performed remotely have been adjusted, with new physical barriers and procedures in place to ensure social distancing. But as chemical distributors and other businesses around the country begin to ramp up onsite operations and return to more normal routines, there are more precautions that we must all take to continue operating in a safe and effective manner.
As chemical distributors face these new workplace safety realities, NACD stands ready to provide industry-specific resources to address the unique challenges associated with navigating the pandemic and doubling down on our commitment to continuous improvement through Responsible Distribution and the tenets of Safe + Sound Week.
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