‘On the Safe Side’ mini podcasts preview virtual NSC Safety Congress & Expo keynotes

Itasca, IL — Prior to their keynote sessions at the virtual National Safety Council Safety Congress & Expo, NIOSH Director John Howard, SAFEmap CEO Corrie Pitzer and noted motivational speaker Ricky Rollins each sat down with a host of On the Safe Side, a podcast from Safety+Health, to share a preview of their presentations.

Howard, who delivered remarks on the agency’s new Future of Work Initiative during the Opening Session on March 3, talked with S+H Associate Editor Kevin Druley.

“This is a vast topic and it has many, many different parts,” Howard said. “What I’m going to concentrate on to try to organize our thinking is in three major areas. One is workplace issues, the second is work itself and three is the workforce. So, we’re going to talk about all three of those areas and give listeners a general overview so they grasp the scope and the breadth of future-of-work studies.”

Pitzer is slated to deliver the Occupational Keynote, titled “The Final Frontier: Zero Fatalities ‘To Boldly Go Where No One Has Gone Before …,’” at 9 a.m. Central on March 4. He spoke with S+H Associate Editor Alan Ferguson about the potential for an early warning system for fatal workplace incidents.

“The research that I have done over the past two years now is highlighting what exactly we can measure,” Pitzer said. “And I’ll show examples of organizations that have been quite progressive in this field.”

Rollins, a longtime steel industry supervisor who is now a motivational speaker in the safety field, spoke with S+H Associate Editor Barry Bottino about his steel industry experiences and how workers influence each other and their loved ones. Rollins is scheduled to deliver the Motivational Keynote at 1 p.m. Central on March 4, when he’ll discuss the workplace incident that nearly took his life 24 years ago and how it could have affected his family if he had died that day.

“What I’d like for attendees to take away is, I want you to use your influence on the people around you and, more importantly, is I want you to let them influence you,” Rollins said. “You can teach them the wrong things. You can teach them to skip steps. Or, you can do the right thing by using your influence, and hoping that they’re going to be able to have a little bit safer life.”

To listen to the mini podcast episodes, or other monthly podcasts from S+H, go to safetyandhealthmagazine.com/topics/990-podcasts.