"A gas monitor is not PPE."
This week Dr. Martin and James discuss critical misconceptions about H2S training and workplace safety. James sits on the ANSI Z390.1 committee and brings direct expertise on the 2024 updated standard.
Over the past decade, 60 workers have lost their lives in hydrogen sulfide incidents. Drawing from real incidents and field experience, they reveal what separates training that protects workers from programs that just check boxes.
Inside the Episode:
Resources mentioned:
The Risk Matrix Podcast: Weekly masterclass in risk management from industry titans Dr. L.F. Martin (32-year veteran, Board of Global EHS Credentialing Impact Award winner) and James Junkin (trainer of 40,000+ safety professionals, ASSP's 2024 Safety Professional of the Year).
Every Tuesday: The tough conversations safety managers need to have. Critical insights from safety experts. Real-world strategies. Actionable solutions.
The Risk Matrix Podcast is powered by Veriforce: Bringing workers home safe from high-hazard jobs.
"He took it for the rest of his crew. Two of those workers were badly burned over the majority of their body after the explosion happened."
This week Dr. Martin and James sit down with Robert Day, Managing Director at Cognisense, to discuss critical vulnerabilities in how we verify and validate workplace safety training.
Drawing from this tragic hydrocarbon loading case where four workers had training certificates but only one actually completed the training, they reveal why your training documentation might not prove what you think it does. From legacy system vulnerabilities to technology gaps, training integrity has become a challenge in occupational safety that impacts companies' compliance status and worker safety.
Inside the Episode:
About Our Guest:Robert Day, Managing Director at Cognisense, is a regulatory compliance and training standards expert with a military firefighter background that evolved into decades of hazardous materials response, risk assessments for major insurers, and advisory work shaping legislation and industry standards. His focus on how technology impacts training integrity brings a uniquely informed perspective on where online assessment tools protect or compromise workplace safety.
The Risk Matrix Podcast: Weekly masterclass in risk management from industry titans Dr. L.F. Martin (32-year veteran, Board of Global EHS Credentialing Impact Award winner) and James Junkin (trainer of 40,000+ safety professionals, ASSP's 2024 Safety Professional of the Year).
Every Tuesday: The tough conversations safety managers need to have. Critical insights from safety experts. Real-world strategies. Actionable solutions.
The Risk Matrix Podcast is powered by Veriforce: Bringing workers home safe from high-hazard jobs.
"Onboarding is not a one-and-done. Onboarding is a process."
James and Dr. Martin address the critical vulnerability window that keeps safety directors up at night: the first 90 days.
They've seen too many companies bring workers on with four-hour orientations, then struggle to defend their program to OSHA or a jury after an incident. The reality? Most injuries happen in those first 90 days when workers are learning the job, adapting to company culture, and figuring out how things really work.
James shares a stark example: a midstream contractor that scaled from 50 to 500 employees in 60 days with a 10-minute onboarding video - six minutes on admin, four on safety. His question cuts to the heart of it: "How would you defend that to a compliance officer or to 12 members of a jury?"
In this episode, they reveal what separates checkbox orientation from systematic onboarding that actually prepares workers for high-hazard jobs.
KEY TAKEAWAYS:
Most injuries happen in the first 90 days when workers are learning the job and company culture
Standardized training (OSHA 10, SafeLands) is necessary but not sufficient without company-specific onboarding
Effective onboarding includes mentorship programs, documented competency milestones, and systematic processes that extend beyond the first day
Track injury data by worker tenure (60, 90, 180 days) to identify gaps in your onboarding effectiveness
The Risk Matrix Podcast: Weekly masterclass in risk management from industry titans Dr. L.F. Martin (32-year veteran, Board of Global EHS Credentialing Impact Award winner) and James Junkin (trainer of 40,000+ safety professionals, ASSP's 2024 Safety Professional of the Year).
Every Tuesday: The tough conversations safety managers need to have. Critical insights from safety experts. Real-world strategies. Actionable solutions.
The Risk Matrix Podcast is powered by Veriforce: Bringing workers home safe from high-hazard jobs.
"If you don't document it, it didn't happen." James and Dr. Martin tackle the documentation paradox every safety professional faces. They've always said paper safety isn't real safety - but when OSHA shows up or litigation starts, documentation is how you prove you protected your workers.
In this episode, they reveal what separates meaningless paperwork from documentation that actually matters.
KEY TAKEAWAYS:
The Risk Matrix Podcast: Weekly masterclass in risk management from industry titans Dr. L.F. Martin (32-year veteran, Board of Global EHS Credentialing Impact Award winner) and James Junkin (trainer of 40,000+ safety professionals, ASSP's 2024 Safety Professional of the Year).
Every Tuesday: The tough conversations safety managers need to have. Critical insights from safety experts. Real-world strategies. Actionable solutions.
The Risk Matrix Podcast is powered by Veriforce: Bringing workers home safe from high-hazard jobs.
This week Dr. Martin and James tackle the uncomfortable question most safety pros avoid: can you actually defend your training program when OSHA shows up?
Drawing from thousands of field assessments where only 5% of contractors meet OSHA training standards, they reveal the critical gaps between checkbox compliance and programs that hold up under scrutiny. From the OSHA 10/30 misconception costing companies six figures to the 2 minutes 56 seconds of lockout/tagout training that won't survive an inspection, these are the training failures putting your workers and company at risk right now.
Inside the Episode:
The Risk Matrix Podcast: Weekly masterclass in risk management from industry titans Dr. L.F. Martin (32-year veteran, Board of Global EHS Credentialing Impact Award winner) and James Junkin (trainer of 40,000+ safety professionals, ASSP's 2024 Safety Professional of the Year).
Every Tuesday: The tough conversations safety managers need to have. Critical insights from safety experts. Real-world strategies. Actionable solutions.
The Risk Matrix Podcast is powered by Veriforce: Bringing workers home safe from high-hazard jobs.
This week Dr. Martin and James dive into OSHA's most cited violations for 2025, revealing the "low-hanging fruit" citations that are costing companies thousands and putting workers at risk.
Fresh from the National Safety Council conference in Denver, they break down each of the Top 10 with field-tested insights you won't find in the regulations. From fall protection failures to training gaps that erlook
Inside the Episode:
The Risk Matrix Podcast: Weekly masterclass in risk management from industry titans Dr. L.F. Martin (32-year veteran, Board of Global EHS Credentialing Impact Award winner) and James Junkin (trainer of 40,000+ safety professionals, ASSP's 2024 Safety Professional of the Year).
Every Tuesday: The tough conversations safety managers need to have. Critical insights from safety experts. Real-world strategies. Actionable solutions.
The Risk Matrix Podcast is powered by Veriforce: Bringing workers home safe from high-hazard jobs.
This week Dr. Martin and James channel David Letterman's classic countdown format to tackle the ethical challenges that define modern safety practice.
From the Friday 4:30 PM confined space scenario to whistleblowing decisions, these aren't theoretical problems—they're the real-world situations that test your professional integrity and could determine whether workers make it home safely.
Drawing from decades of field experience, our hosts break down the most common ethical conflicts safety professionals face: production pressure versus safety standards, training compliance versus real competency, and the gray areas where professional codes of conduct meet workplace reality.
Whether you're a seasoned CSP or new to the field, these scenarios will challenge how you think about doing the right thing when it's not the easy thing.
Inside the Episode:
The Risk Matrix Podcast: Weekly masterclass in risk management from industry titans Dr. L.F. Martin (32-year veteran, Board of Global EHS Credentialing Impact Award winner) and James Junkin (trainer of 40,000+ safety professionals, ASSP's 2024 Safety Professional of the Year).
Every Tuesday: The tough conversations safety managers need to have. Critical insights from safety experts. Real-world strategies. Actionable solutions.
The Risk Matrix Podcast is powered by Veriforce: Bringing workers home safe from high-hazard jobs.
This week Dr. Martin and James dive into heat stress litigation. With 436 worker deaths over the past decade and federal heat standards stalled, courts are reshaping heat illness prevention through cases.
The hosts discuss Matthew Arvin's article "The Heat of the Moment: Recent Litigation Regarding Heat Stress Injuries" from Professional Safety Journal, breaking down how five states are writing their own rules while these court decisions set new precedents for what heat safety really means.
Inside the Episode:
The Risk Matrix Podcast: Weekly masterclass in risk management from industry titans Dr. L.F. Martin (32-year veteran, Board of Global EHS Credentialing Impact Award winner) and James Junkin (trainer of 40,000+ safety professionals, ASSP's 2024 Safety Professional of the Year).
Every Tuesday: The tough conversations safety managers need to have. Critical insights from safety experts. Real-world strategies. Actionable solutions.
The Risk Matrix Podcast is powered by Veriforce: Bringing workers home safe from high-hazard jobs.
Are those red-yellow-green boxes on your safety documents actually helping workers or just creating colorful paperwork?
Dr. Logan F. Martin and James Junkin examine one of safety's most common tools: the risk matrix.
This episode explores whether these assessment tools belong in field documents or should stay in planning phases, where they might add real value.
The hosts tackle uncomfortable questions about when and where risk assessment should happen, while defending frontline workers when safety systems fail them.
Inside the episode:
James gets protective of frontline workers: "We're really good at pointing out the failures of the workers without looking at the failures of the system itself."
Dr. Martin is direct about field-level risk matrices: putting red and yellow ratings on field documents "is not helpful at all."
Both hosts challenge conventional thinking about where risk assessment belongs and whether we're setting workers up for success or failure.
The Risk Matrix Podcast is powered by Veriforce. Learn more at veriforce.com
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When a workplace incident happens, who’s held responsible—and how?
This week, James Junkin and Dr. Logan Martin take on one of the most contentious debates in safety leadership: the line between accountability and blame.
With safety investigations on the rise and regulators sharpening their focus, leaders face a complex reality.
Post-incident reviews can either drive improvement or spark fear and silence.
So how do we build cultures that learn without letting negligence slide?
Inside the episode:
• Why “no-blame” cultures are often misunderstood
• When accountability is necessary—and when it backfires
• The role of progressive discipline in a safety-first workplace
• How OSHA treats unpreventable employee misconduct defenses
• Documentation mistakes that weaken your internal defense
This episode offers a clear, field-tested view of what safety leadership looks like when it’s done right.
The Risk Matrix Podcast is powered by Veriforce.Learn more at veriforce.com
Hurricane Katrina made landfall as a Category 3 storm—but what followed was far more devastating than wind speed alone could explain. Levee failures, flooded hospitals, drowned neighborhoods, overwhelmed shelters, and delayed federal response turned a natural disaster into one of the most catastrophic humanitarian crises in U.S. history.
Twenty years later, the memory still cuts deep.
In this episode of The Risk Matrix, James Junkin opens up about his firsthand experience living through Katrina, the cascading failures in leadership and planning, and the unshakable responsibility that safety professionals carry—then and now.
Dr. Martin and James break down:
What went wrong with evacuation, communication, and emergency response
Why “mandatory evacuation” meant little to those without transportation or options
The overlooked impact on working-class and vulnerable communities
How leadership hesitation and policy blind spots cost lives
What the safety community has (and hasn’t) learned since 2005
And why being prepared today means planning for the people most at risk tomorrow
James also reflects on the emotional aftermath—from attic drownings to Superdome overcrowding—and the citizens who stepped up when systems failed.
👉 Read James’ companion article in EHS Today:
“Preparing for Hurricane Season 2025”
🎧 Whether you work in public safety, EHS, emergency planning, or executive leadership, this episode will challenge the way you think about readiness—and how quickly conditions can unravel when assumptions go unchecked.
We talk often about lessons learned in safety. This one demands we remember.
📣 Join the conversation:
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Season 2 of The Risk Matrix begins with a high-stakes debate on OSHA’s proposed rollbacks.Hosts James Junkin and Dr. Logan Martin tackle three of the 25 changes under consideration: respirator requirements, construction illumination standards, and the scope of the general duty clause. With decades of safety and compliance experience, they break down what these proposals mean for safety leaders in the field — and where the disagreements begin.Want to weigh in? Public comment is open until September 2.https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2025/07/01/2025-12235/amending-the-medical-evaluation-requirements-in-the-respiratory-protection-standard-for-certain
Conference season is here, and most safety professionals are doing it wrong.
In this tactical episode, James Junkin reports live from ASSP 2025 in Orlando while Dr. Martin shares the strategic framework that transforms conferences from expensive networking events into career-accelerating investments.
Hosted by industry veterans Dr. Martin and James Junkin, this conversation unpacks the hidden strategies of conference success and how intentional planning, strategic networking, and focused learning can help safety professionals maximize their ROI and advance their careers.
Stream now and see why this episode is essential listening before your next safety conference.
In this episode of The Risk Matrix, hosts James Junkin and Dr. Martin unpack the latest proposed rule changes from OSHA—offering practical insight into what safety leaders should be paying attention to and why it matters.
From respirator selection and medical evaluations to recordkeeping rollbacks and the evolving role of the General Duty Clause, the hosts explore what these changes could mean for day-to-day operations, worker safety, and long-term compliance strategies.
Whether you're managing a respiratory protection program or reviewing OSHA 300 logs, this conversation will help you stay informed, prepared, and proactive in a changing regulatory landscape.
In this episode of The Risk Matrix, Dr. Martin and James Junkin make the case for shifting safety upstream.
They explore how Antecedent-Based Safety reframes traditional behavior-based models by focusing on the systems, signals, and decisions that shape behavior before an incident occurs. From field-tested observations to common sense hazard ID, this is a grounded, real-world look at what it takes to bring workers home safe from high-hazard jobs.
Mental, physical, and financial health aren't just HR concerns, they're frontline safety issues. In this episode, we sit down with David Joerring, CEO of HealthKey, to explore how access to simple, affordable care reduces risk across the subcontractor workforce.
This conversation unpacks the real-world connection between worker stress and workplace incidents — and how better data and outreach can help safety pros take action before the next call comes in.
Stream now and see why well‑being is risk management’s new frontier.
We're celebrating our 100th episode!
Tune in this week to hear:
Our favorite moments from past episodes
How James met Dr. Martin
Most memorable guests
Bonus, we are giving away $100 to a live listener.
As always, bring your questions.
We're tackling a big one on The Risk Matrix LIVE this week: how to modernize your Operator Qualification program.
The truth is, most OQ systems were built for regulatory compliance and do not to reflect how work actually gets done today. That gap between "qualified" and "competent" shows up in ways that could cost you through rework, delays, incidents, and audit exposure.
This week, we will be joined by OQ legend, Tom Meek, Vice President of Regulatory Compliance, who has 30+ years of hands on experience building programs, advising clients, and preparing for audits. Together, we'll break down where traditional OQ falls short, how you can bring your program up to speed, and how to build the business case to get it funded.
Even when safety risks are rising, many leaders struggle to get the budget they need. Executives often view safety as a cost; not a strategic investment.
We explore hands-on examples you can use to make the business case for safety by tying it to outcomes leadership cares about like reducing downtime, liability, and insurance costs. You'll learn how to speak the language of decision-makers, quantify risk in financial terms, and hear real-world examples of what actually gets budget approved.
These are the real disconnects:
Safety vs. Speed. Culture vs. Compliance. Reporting vs. Reality.
This is the conversation between safety, operations, and leadership that everyone avoids. We're bringing it front and center.