2023 VPPPA Region 1 Safety and Health Excellence Conference & Exposition

The annual conference is the premier Safety and Health conference in New England focusing on OSHA’s Voluntary Protection Program and VPP Excellence. We expect approximately 150 attendees for this conference at the Southbridge Hotel & Conference Center.

This conference is an exciting opportunity, with great speakers, to learn more about the OSHA Voluntary Protection Program (VPP) and how you can use Human & Organizational Performance to support the VPP philosophy to design more resilient working systems learning from those closest to the work.

Opening Speaker: Ron Gantt

“Safety Differently”

Ron Gantt will be providing an introduction to human and organizational performance (HOP).   This conference opening presentation will help organizations develop more resilient working systems supporting the VPP philosophy of continuous improvement. You can’t manage what you don’t understand, and HOP principles help you peel back the layers to continue the work of understanding.

HOP/Safety Differently is a risk-based operating philosophy which recognizes that error is a feature of work, not of bad people, and that an organization’s processes and systems greatly influence employee actions and choices, and consequently, their likelihood of success.  This is a powerful approach to improving the performance of both individuals and organizations. By adopting a newer view of safety, organizations can create safer, more productive, and more engaging work environments, while also reducing costs and improving overall performance.

Yondr Group – HSE Director- Americas

Ron Gantt is a safety and human factors professional with over 20 years experience in industries such as construction, chemical manufacturing, utilities, and high tech. He currently is HSE Director for the Americas for Yondr Group. Ron has undergraduate degrees in psychology and occupational safety & health and a graduate degree in advanced safety engineering and management. He is also a doctoral student in the Cognitive Systems Engineering Lab at The Ohio State University.

Closing Speaker: Andrea Baker

HOP Mentor / Author

Andrea will be providing an overall view of VPP and HOP.  This conference closing presentation will focus on HOP as a cultural change, a movement that needs to be planned and fostered, which in turn supports the continuous improvement journey of VPP sites.

Since the first day Andrea heard the concepts of HOP, this became her passion, and her mission became clear: She wants to make this message accessible and valuable for anyone that has a moment to listen. She wants to help integrate these concepts into industry and VPP.  She wants to help embed it in leadership messaging, in management systems, and use it to enhance the great initiatives we already have. She wants to help work towards the day that HOP is not called HOP, it is just “what we do.”  And VPP is a collaborative program that fits extremely well with HOP.

The “HOP Mentor”

Andrea (Andy) Baker started practicing and teaching Human and Organizational Performance (HOP) principles while working for one of the largest multinational industrial companies in the world. As an environmental, health and safety leader of manufacturing, assembly and distribution facilities, she worked through the complexity of adopting HOP principles from the ground up.

In 2014, she began teaching HOP Fundamentals and Learning Teams around the US and anchoring the concepts in existing operating rhythms. She began extrapolating these strategies to a larger scale, and in 2015 became the HOP Senior Expert for the company’s 300+ multi-sector locations in Europe. In 2018, Andrea stepped away from the company to help other organizations on their HOP journey.

Andrea has worked with over 60 companies, across 9 industries, in 16 different countries, and has mentored individuals from every region of the globe. Andrea co-authored, “Bob’s Guide to Operational Learning” to help organizations adopt Operational Learning practices.