Issue link: http://palletcentral.uberflip.com/i/860755
22 PalletCentral • July-August 2017 palletcentral.com SAFETY (5) What other ideas are there to enhance and improve VPP moving forward? While there is a desire to increase VPP participation in the future, many participants urged caution in "lowering the bar" to allow companies in, noting that this could reduce the integrity of the program and it would be better to bring more consistency into VPP qualification across the OSHA regional offices. One state agency representative observed that the goal is to have more programs be "VPP ready" even if the employer opts not to go through the rigorous VPP approval process. Many agreed that VPP has lost momentum due to lack of support in recent years by the agency as well as because it is no longer the "new thing;" others said that multi-national companies choose to benchmark their programs to ISO and other safety management systems, rather than appear "US-centric" by gearing programs to the VPP criteria. Much of the discussion surrounded the role of the SGEs, and industry representatives called for greater use of these individuals to conduct re-certification audits for VPP sites, and pointed to the need for more training for the SGEs, perhaps including incentives for SGEs to recruit other companies as VPP participants. Union representatives were critical of using federal resources, through VPP, to assist large companies that have the resources to do this work themselves, while ignoring small and medium-sized companies that could benefit from involvement and mentoring. The VPP program is open to both large and smaller employers, but often small companies find the prerequisites too challenging to tackle under the current program. The head of the Voluntary Protection Programs Participant' Association (VPPPA) noted, however, that 40 percent of current VPP worksites are small businesses.