Podcast: Inside OSHA’s VPP program and what it means for industrial leaders

Key takeaways

• Achieving OSHA's VPP status requires a deep culture shift focused on continuous safety improvement and employee involvement.
• VPPPA offers mentoring and peer learning to help companies reach top-tier safety performance, with or without VPP certification.
• Complacency in safety can lead to decline; even elite sites must keep improving to avoid the “VPP slump.”
• The Safety+ Symposium provides hands-on learning, peer networking, and insights on AI, HOP, and safety leadership trends.

In this episode of Great Question: A Manufacturing Podcast, Dave Blanchard, editor in chief of EHS Today, speaks with Chris Williams, executive director of the VPPPA, about the evolving role of safety in manufacturing and the impact of the VPPPA’s work. The conversation explores what it takes to achieve and maintain OSHA’s VPP designation, emphasizing the importance of cultural commitment and continuous improvement. Chris shares insights on mentorship, knowledge-sharing, and the shift toward more collaborative safety models, particularly for small and mid-sized companies. They also preview the upcoming Safety+ Symposium, highlighting hands-on learning, peer engagement, and forward-looking topics like AI and Human Organizational Performance.

Now maintaining VPP is just as difficult. Every site in the program, every company in the program is required to go through a recertification audit every three to five years. This is a top down tear down of your site safety and health practices to the point where an OSHA representative, the VP managers on site for three or four days at least, along with special government employees from other VPP sites, and they're looking to rip apart your site. And I mean that in a positive way because a VPP site, when we talk about that culture change, they really want that. They want you to come in and identify any potential hazards or any issues to find and fix because.

That's part of continuous improvement and there are sites that will legally withdraw from the program, what we call the VPP slump, where they get to a point where they look at it, they've gotten to where they don't feel they're up to the standard. So voluntary withdraw, voluntarily withdraw from the program in addition to having those stringent recertification audits that can result in a site being pulled from the program. So it's very difficult to attain, even more difficult to achieve. The one thing I'll add to that, Dave, is that a lot of folks, when we talk about third-party accreditations, even with VPP, there's a lot of companies, a lot of sites that view that achievement as the culmination of their safety and health journey. I mean, in reality, achieving VPP star status is [just a] point on their safety and health journey of continuous improvement. It definitely is not the end because there's always room to get better.

EHST: Yes, that's key. You mentioned that continuous improvement. I found that throughout my career, which focuses heavily on manufacturing companies, no matter what process you're talking about, whether it's safety or production or whatnot, if you feel like you've gotten to the pinnacle of success and nothing could possibly get any better. That's when things start going wrong because you get too complacent.

CW: Complacency is the correct term. We've got a presentation session we do at our conference every few years that that is actually called the VPP slump and what it's about is sites companies that are in VPP for 8 plus years that have gone through a few recertification audits.

And they come to a point where what's some of them will ask what's left to achieve. And to your point, you know whenever somebody says, you know we've got there, we're doing, we're the very best of the best. So that's great, but take a look at your lagging indicators. Are they zeros? Well, if they're not zeros, there's still things, there's still folks that are going home that that are injured. It may be a a minor other recordable, but there's still opportunities to get better and get that number down to 0. I'm an optimist. Some call me a dreamer, to quote John Lennon, but I firmly believe that zero is achievable across the board and that's what our sites, that's what our VPPPA members work towards.