Job Description

Job Summary:

We are seeking a collaborative and principled Safety Manager to champion our commitment to protecting every team member and to uphold our VPP Star certification at our 600-employee unionized heavy manufacturing site. This role is central to cultivating a culture of shared ownership, continuous learning, and operational excellence, grounded in The McWane Way principles, values, and behaviors.
 

The ideal candidate is both a strategic thinker and hands-on leader who models humility, fosters psychological safety, and inspires proactive engagement in safety and well-being

Key Responsibilities:

Leadership & Culture – Living the McWane Way

•     Serve as a cultural steward for safety excellence, integrating McWane’s core principles into daily operations and long-term strategy.

•     Champion a proactive safety culture aligned with VPP Star principles, with a strong focus on Behavior-Based Safety (BBS), and employee ownership of safety.

•     Foster employee-led safety initiatives, including Hourly Safety Reps, peer observations, and grassroots safety conversations.

•     Champion a collaborative learning environment, ensuring that events, whether injuries, near misses, or unsafe conditions, are used as catalysts for organizational learning and continuous improvement.

•     Partner with hourly and salaried employees, including union leadership, to maintain a cooperative, transparent, and safety-focused work environment.

•     Lead and develop the plant's Hourly Safety Representative Program and other peer-led safety engagement initiatives.

•     Maintain a strong presence on the shop floor, listening, learning, coaching, and reinforcing shared responsibility for safety.

Program Management & Compliance

•     Ensure ongoing compliance with OSHA, EPA, and other applicable federal, state, and local safety and environmental regulations.

•     Sustain and elevate the site's OSHA VPP Star status through excellence in documentation, management commitment, engagement, and continuous improvement.

•     Conduct regular audits, risk assessments, and job hazard analyses (JHAs); ensure timely follow-up on corrective actions.

•     Serve as the primary contact for regulatory agencies and manage reporting requirements (e.g., OSHA logs, environmental reports).

Training & Development

•     Design and deliver training on safety procedures, hazard communication, lockout/tagout (LOTO), confined space entry, machine guarding, and other critical programs to real world application and The McWane Way principles.

•     Equip supervisors and frontline leaders to coach, model, and reinforce safety expectations in everyday decisions.

•     Lead onboarding and refresher training with a focus on Behavior-Based Safety, human performance, and operational learning.

Incident Response & Investigation

•     Oversee and set expectations for incident investigations, ensuring thorough root cause analysis, documentation, and corrective/preventive actions.

Data & Metrics

•     Monitor and analyze safety performance indicators to identify trends and drive data-informed decisions.

•     Use leading and lagging indicators to guide strategic priorities and evaluate the impact of cultural and system changes.

Team & Leadership

•     Lead and coach safety team members, ensuring alignment with both technical excellence and cultural leadership.

•     Build cross-functional partnerships with HR, Maintenance, Engineering, and Operations to integrate safety into every aspect of work.

Qualifications

Qualifications:

•     Bachelor’s degree in occupational safety, Industrial Hygiene, Environmental Science, Engineering, or related field (required).

•     Minimum of 7 years of progressive safety experience in a heavy industrial or manufacturing environment.

•     Proven success working in a unionized environment, with the ability to foster alignment and mutual respect.

•     Strong working knowledge of OSHA standards, VPP requirements, Behavior-Based Safety, Operational Learning, and best practices in industrial safety.

•     Experience facilitating learning from events or safety learning teams is highly valued.

•     Demonstrated commitment to coaching, collaboration, and continuous improvement.

•     Professional certifications such as CSP, CIH, or CHMM preferred

•     Excellent communication, leadership, and problem-solving skills.

•     Strong computer proficiency (Microsoft Office, EHS management systems, etc.).

Work Environment: 

•     Primarily plant-based with frequent time spent on the production floor.

•     Must be able to work in environments with noise, heat, heavy machinery, and exposure to dust and chemicals (with appropriate PPE).

•     Occasional travel may be required for training, corporate meetings, or compliance-related activities.

Work environment characteristics described are representative of those an employee encounters while performing the essential functions of this job. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions. While performing the duties of this job, the employee is regularly exposed to moving mechanical parts and high, precarious places.  The employee is frequently exposed to fumes or airborne particles, outside weather conditions and extreme heat or cold.  The employee is occasionally exposed to wet and/or humid conditions, toxic or caustic chemicals, electrical shock, and vibration. The noise level in the work environment is usually very loud.

Additional Information

McWane, Inc. is an equal opportunity employer. Employment is made available to all persons without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, and marital status, disability that does not prohibit performance of essential job functions with reasonable accommodation, Vietnam Era or veteran status. This policy applies to hiring, placement, recruitment, rates of pay or other forms of compensation, benefits, promotions, transfers, layoffs, recalls, Company-sponsored training, terminations, and other employment-related activities.

Please note this job description is not designed to cover or contain a comprehensive listing of activities, duties, or responsibilities that are required of the employee for this job. Duties, responsibilities, and activities may change at any time with or without notice.
McWane is a Federal VEVRAA contractor, and an Equal Opportunity Employer committed to providing equal employment opportunity in all employment practices. McWane will not discriminate against any applicant for employment because of their race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, sexual orientation, disability, veteran or service member status, marital status, citizenship status (In IL - sex, including same sex, ancestry, order of protection status, physical or mental disability, military status, pregnancy, unfavorable discharge status, genetic information), (In IA - gender identity), (In CA- gender identity or expression, and genetic information) or any other category protected by federal, state or local law.