My Big Safety Challenge

Safety leadership is more than complying with rules and regulations. It’s about creating solutions that are relational, inspirational, and transformational. BCSP, the gold standard in safety certification, and Dale Carnegie (DC), the premier expert in leadership training, introduce you to safety professionals who have solved unique challenges in innovative ways. Let the lessons they’ve learned help you lead your team. The BCSP+DC partnership builds leaders in the safety, health, and environmental profession through a series of live, interactive online courses. “My Big Safety Challenge” highlights safety leaders applying those principles in real-world scenarios.

My Big Safety Challenge is a business podcast hosted by bcsp, with 50 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80.

bcsp hosts My Big Safety Challenge, a business show with 50 episodes published.

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  Episode #3

  Season 07 Episode 03: Kent McElhattan, McElhattan Foundation

  Sep 27, 202641 minS7

  Eliminating workplace fatalities by 2050 is an ambitious goal. For Kent McElHattan, it’s also a deeply personal one. Safety has been a part of Kent’s life for decades, from helping grow Industrial Scientific into a global leader in gas detection to serving as chairman of the National Safety Council. Along the way, he came to understand that workplace fatalities often aren’t the result of people simply being careless. They happen while workers are trying to get the job done. Now, through the McElhattan Foundation and its Zero2050 initiative, Kent is working to change that. In this episode he discusses what it may take to eliminate workplace fatalities, why near misses deserve greater attention, and how a $1 million prize is helping fuel the search for life-saving safety solutions.

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  Episode #2

  Season 07 Episode 02: Amber Miller, United Steel Workers Union

  Sep 14, 202650 minS7

  Safety starts with people. For Amber Miller, Vice President at Large of the United States Steelworkers Union, protecting workers means creating environments where people feel heard and respected. Coming from a family with deep union roots, Amber has long understood health and safety as a driving force behind workers’ wellbeing. In this episode, she shares her people-first approach to safety leadership and the importance of showing up with curiosity and empathy. She also explores why the people doing the work often hold the solutions, and how listening to their experiences can be the key to building trust and creating meaningful change.

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  Episode #1

  Season 07 Episode 01: Steve Scott, HOP Improvement, LLC

  Aug 31, 202657 minS7

  What does it look like when an organization truly lives its values? For Human and Organization Performance (HOP) consultant, Steve Scott, it starts with trust: trust workers to know their jobs, trust workers to treat mistakes as opportunities to learn, and create enough trust for people to speak up about risks. Drawing on thirty years of experience at Alcoa, from the factory floor to leadership and continuous improvement roles, Scott shares how HOP can help organizations move beyond simply preventing incidents, to understanding how to truly protect workers and organizations. He explores the benefits and challenges that come with putting HOP into practice, and why, as he puts it, “Telling people we’re going to make a change is not enough. You gotta demonstrate it.”

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  Episode #0

  My Big Safety Challenge Season 7 Trailer

  Aug 27, 202626 minS7

  Season 7 of My Big Safety Challenge is here — and this time, host Merle Heckman is joined by a new co-host, Jim Frederick, Commissioner of the Virginia Department of Labor and Industry. After six seasons and more than 50 guests from companies large and small, this season keeps digging into the real challenges safety leaders face — and how they work through them. In this trailer, Merle and Jim preview what's ahead: a steel industry veteran who built his career on enthusiasm and influence, a former hourly employee turned human performance trainer, an entrepreneur pursuing zero workplace deaths by 2050, a 30-year OSHA veteran, and a conversation about confronting drug addiction in the workplace. Jim also shares his own path — from growing up in Indiana to running a state OSHA program in Virginia — and the two dig into why building real relationships, with regulators, coworkers, and everyone in between, is one of the most underrated tools in safety leadership.

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  Episode #7

  Season 06, Episode 07: My Big Safety Challenge with John Whalen, Microsoft

  Mar 30, 202643 minS6

  John Whalen, CSP, AMERS Regional EHS Assessment Manager at Microsoft, shares his journey from volunteer firefighter to safety professional—and how those early experiences shaped his people-centered approach to safety. In this episode of My Big Safety Challenge, he explains why listening, empathy, and truly understanding workers’ needs are essential to solving problems effectively and building trust. John also shares his experiences working at a hospital, and later as a safety professional for a team of archaeologists, and how these experiences taught him to lead as a partner—not as an enforcer. Ultimately, John reminds us how invaluable curiosity and collaboration are for effective safety leadership.

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