Lab Manager is excited to announce its first annual Safety Excellence Awards, a program developed to recognize and celebrate the individuals, teams, and products that best demonstrate an improved safety culture in the lab.  

Regardless of the size or type of lab you work in, establishing a culture of safety is imperative. Everyone in the lab plays a role in developing and sustaining safety culture and it is important to recognize individuals and organizations who are excelling at this challenge.

To enter, you can self-nominate or nominate your manager/peer for an award category. We encourage participants to share their stories of why the nominee is deserving of an Excellence Award. Your entry should describe and demonstrate to our judges how the nominee excels at improving the safety culture in their lab.

*Submissions for the 2024 Safety Excellence Awards are now closed. Stay tuned for updates on 2025 Safety Excellence Awards nominations.

• To gain recognition of your (or your colleague’s) hard work and dedication to making the lab a safer place to work 
• Recognize the success of your staff and organization in changing your lab’s safety culture for the better 
• Highlight the challenges you (or your colleague) have overcome as a lab manager and share your solutions to help others facing similar challenges in their own labs

Most Improved Safety Culture: This prize will be awarded to the lab or team who best exemplifies an improved safety culture since 2020. Changing the safety culture of a lab is a big challenge, and the winner of this award should demonstrate through storytelling and quantifiable metrics how this change was achieved. As “culture” refers to a group, this award will recognize a team rather than an individual. Entrants should provide quantitative and/or qualitative data and measurements showing the value of changing and improving, and how their change in safety culture has provided a return on their investment. Entries should talk about safety observables and near-misses, compliance, engagement, and risk assessing/management challenges. Measure by near-misses, recordable (government definition of accident/OSHA) accident rate/improvement, and safety observables (fixing a problem before it occurs). Entries must not exceed 500 words. 

Excellence in Safety Leadership: This prize will be awarded to an individual, either self-nominated or nominated by their peers, who best exemplifies leadership in lab safety. Entries should effectively tell a story of why this person is a good leader, how they drive a lab’s safety culture from the top-down, how they make their lab staff feel safer, how they’ve improved their lab’s productivity, and how their example encourages people to do their best work. Entries should be descriptive about the differences this person has made and why turnover is low among their staff—numbers alone will not do it justice. Changes in lab safety are challenging, and the winner of this award should demonstrate how they’ve figured out the “recipe” to convey the importance of lab safety to their staff. Entries must not exceed 500 words.

Innovative Safety Product Award: This prize will be awarded to a vendor who has developed an effective safety product or service for the laboratory industry within the last 18 months. Entries should explain why the product makes a lab safer and why it is a wise investment for those who work in a lab facility. Why is the product innovative and helpful? How does it protect vulnerable consumer groups while ensuring the safety of new technology? What are the specific ways it improves a lab’s safety plan, ROI, and efficiency? Products that promote laboratory safety may include, but are not limited to: PPE and smart PPE, safety apparel, emergency response equipment, industrial hygiene, and technology products. The winner will gain recognition throughout the laboratory industry for their innovative developments that protect lab staff and improve productivity. An entry fee of $100 per product will apply to this category, with a $50 entry fee for all subsequent products from the same company. 

Winners will be announced in December and will be interviewed for articles featured in Lab Manager. Winners will also be given a plaque at the 2024 Leadership Summit. Honorable Mention and any other awards will be given solely at the judges’ discretion.