The first core value at Heritage Environmental Services is "Safe and Compliant, or Not at All," and that starts with having an experienced and passionate leader at the head of safety operations.
Jim Mangas, CSP, director of safety at Heritage Environmental Services.
This year, Jim Mangas joined the Heritage team as director of safety with nearly 20 years of experience. He shared with BIC Magazine how Heritage has built a standout safety culture in the waste industry.
Mangas' passion for safety began when he served as a firefighter/paramedic and realized first responders were "mostly reacting to something that had happened, [while] safety professionals have the opportunity to get ahead of incidents and make a difference." This influenced his decision to pursue a career in safety.
In the industry, however, he found not everyone was as passionate as he was. "My biggest challenge has been getting company leaders to move beyond compliance and realize the OSHA standard is not enough in many cases," he said. "'The minimum' is one small step above inadequate."
Mangas said he believes safety needs to evolve with the workplace. "Companies should be looking at industry best practices and benchmarking others that are doing safety right," he advised.
Building a safety culture should be integral to any business. To achieve it, Mangas said, safety must not only be a core value, but the most highly regarded value at a company. He stressed that safety is about people; it isn't a value that is just talked about, but lived out.
"It must be the way you do everything in your business. Everyone from the CEO to the janitor must act upon [it]," he explained.
As an Indiana native, Mangas knew Heritage as a family-owned company with a great reputation. "Not only is Heritage a safe company, but they lead the way in safety," he said.
"Safe and Compliant, or Not at All means if Heritage workers get into a situation that is not safe or compliant, they have the power to stop it, and a job won't be started or finished until they are certain it can be done safely. "This means we are living out the value, and that is exactly what we want," Mangas said.
Moving forward in his new role, Mangas' focus will be on continuous improvement, starting with a Serious Injury & Fatality (SIF) Prevention Process. "We want workers to be able to identify SIF potential in their daily routines so we can stop it before anything happens," he said. "With SIF, you cannot take the business-as-usual approach; it takes a paradigm shift to make the needed impact."
For more information, visit www.heritage-enviro.com or call (877) 436-8778.
