Forgent Power Solutions

Gabe Glovatsky is a seasoned EHS leader focused on reducing risk and strengthening workplace safety. Drawing on expertise in environmental, health and safety strategy, he helps organizations build stronger safety cultures, improve performance and embed risk management into daily operations.

From Prevention to Operational Safety Leadership

My path into EHS began in the clinical setting, partnering with employees recovering from workplace injuries. Over time, I recognized a greater opportunity to prevent those injuries rather than just help people recover from them.

This moved me upstream from the clinic into industrial operations and eventually EHS leadership. Throughout my career, I learned that safety isn't an EHS department problem; it's an operations reality. Sustainable safety performance occurs when risk ownership is embedded within daily operations.

That belief shaped my approach to what I consider the most vital component to a successful EHS program, visible and felt leadership. You cannot manage a safety culture from behind a desk or with a spreadsheet. Leaders must stay present on the floor, engage directly with employees, understand the challenges and communicate risk in ways that resonate across the organization.

If safety becomes a trade-off against throughput when operational pressures increase, you do not have a safety culture; you have a slogan. Consistency builds trust, and trust remains the foundation of any strong safety culture.

Standardizing Principles, Empowering Execution

Working across multiple locations reinforced my belief that safety programs cannot rely on one-size-fits-all policies. While standardized procedures remain essential, effective EHS leadership requires defining the intent behind safety procedures while giving sites flexibility in execution and ownership of local realities. We define the boundaries, while site leaders navigate their unique operational realities.

We must dismantle the myth that we have to choose between a safe workplace and fast line. A safe process is a smooth process, and in our world – smooth is fast.

LOTO procedures demonstrate how this balance works in practice, with non-negotiable requirements adapted to local equipment, workflows and operating conditions. Maintaining local ownership allows sites to apply those standards in ways that reflect their unique operational realities.

Turning Data into Predictive Risk Intelligence

Treating safety as a compliance requirement rather than an integrated part of operations often creates friction and encourages workarounds. Risk mitigation must be embedded into daily workflows, with technology supporting execution, helping teams anticipate risk and drive action rather than just generate more data.

A key operational priority is maintaining preventive maintenance schedules and timely inspections. We rely on centralized systems that issue alerts for missed inspections and upcoming checks, while integrating safety requirements, job hazard analyses and maintenance activities directly into workflows.

Those systems reduce missed inspections while improving coordination across maintenance, production planning and contractor management.

Building Predictive Safety through Operational Insight

One of the industry's biggest misconceptions is that safety and production operate in conflict. In reality, unsafe operations are inherently inefficient, expensive and unpredictable. Incidents create downtime, damage equipment and reduce morale.

Modern EHS leadership requires organizations to move beyond relying solely on safety indicators such as TRIR and DART rates. Early in my career, I learned that these lagging indicators are a good pulse check, but it’s like driving while looking only in the rearview mirror. Those metrics do not replace leading indicators that provide earlier visibility into operational risk.

At Forgent Power Solutions, that includes doubling down on safety suggestion programs, corrective action timelines and near-miss trends to better understand safety culture and identify potential issues.

Rethinking Accountability in Workplace Safety

Workplace safety challenges are often attributed to individual behavior, yet unsafe decisions are frequently shaped by the environment in which they occur. While shortcuts may contribute to incidents, effective EHS leadership requires addressing the conditions behind them rather than assigning blame.

Leaders must move beyond pointing-the-finger and examine the operational pressures, training gaps and workplace conditions that shape decision-making on the floor. Accountability begins with extreme ownership of the environment itself. True risk reduction comes from addressing conditions that create unsafe choices before incidents occur.