When a lab vacancy opens, the pressure to hire can cloud judgment. A candidate may bring an impressive technical pedigree, a polished resume, and well-rehearsed answers to standard interview questions. However, a strong safety culture depends on personnel who consistently apply hazard awareness and compliance practices, even under pressure or tight deadlines.
At the 2026 Lab Manager Leadership Summit, during the roundtable discussion “Safety as a Core Driver in Every Decision,” Dwayne Henry, instructional lab manager of chemical and biological sciences at Montgomery College and co-chair for the American Chemical Society’s Division of Chemical Health and Safety, discussed how laboratory leaders can better evaluate and reinforce those behaviors during hiring and onboarding. He noted that these decisions shape safety outcomes long before employees ever handle hazardous materials or instrumentation.
Assessing safety behavior during interviews
Traditional safety interview questions are often easy for candidates to anticipate, and most respond with rehearsed answers about following protocols and prioritizing compliance. To move beyond these scripted responses, Henry recommends shifting the focus away from direct safety prompts and instead asking candidates to describe a standard technical procedure from start to finish. This behavioral approach allows interviewers to observe whether safety practices are naturally embedded in the workflow or only introduced when explicitly prompted—an indicator of how candidates actually operate under real conditions.
Henry recalled one hiring process in which a strong technical candidate described a complete procedure but did not mention personal protective equipment or other safety considerations. “In mentioning the technique and what he would do … he didn’t mention anything about PPE,” Henry said. “He didn’t mention anything about any type of safety aspects … it just kind of showed that it wasn’t on his mind.”
In contrast, he described another candidate who immediately incorporated safety into her explanation. “She checked to make sure that she put on the correct gloves to make sure that they were going to be compatible with the solvent she was using,” Henry said.
Taken together, the responses offer interviewers a practical read on whether safety is part of how a candidate works or something they only add when prompted.
Addressing the gap between academic training and industry expectations
Differences in how safety is emphasized across academic and commercial environments can also create gaps in preparedness. In many academic settings, students may focus heavily on theory and experimental technique, while receiving less consistent instruction in lab safety habits and workplace expectations.
The challenge, Henry noted, is not simply teaching safety, but determining whether a candidate arrives with any foundational awareness at all. “It’s a lot easier to train a mind that’s already at a certain point than to start fresh from somebody who never saw the real importance of it,” he said.
For laboratory leaders, this gap highlights the value of evaluating safety behaviors during hiring rather than assuming academic performance translates into operational readiness. It also reinforces the need to treat safety training as a core operational requirement rather than a secondary onboarding task.
Avoiding rushed or incomplete onboarding
In fast-paced laboratory environments, pressure to fill roles quickly can lead to shortcuts in onboarding. New hires may be placed into active work settings before fully understanding local safety systems and expectations.
Henry cautioned that, in some cases, new employees are placed directly into active instructional or laboratory roles without adequate orientation. This practice can introduce avoidable risk. A structured onboarding process should ensure that every new hire receives a comprehensive, site-specific safety orientation before beginning work. This includes a guided walkthrough of emergency procedures, eyewash stations, safety showers, and waste disposal streams, along with clear instructions on facility-specific protocols. Establishing this baseline early helps align expectations and reduces variability in safety practices across staff.
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Reinforcing accountability during onboarding
Even with structured onboarding, some situations require a firmer reminder of responsibility for safety compliance. When experienced hires or contractors push back against established protocols, managers often need to reinforce the rationale for those expectations and what is at stake in a regulated lab environment.
Henry emphasized the role of personal accountability in that dynamic. “If something does happen in this lab and you did not prepare those students adequately for it, not only can the college be sued and taken into court, but you can be sued and taken into court as an individual as well,” he said.
That kind of framing can shift how safety is perceived during onboarding. When staff understand that accountability sits at both the institutional and individual level, compliance becomes part of how the work is done, not an optional layer on top of it.
Building safety into hiring and onboarding systems
A strong safety culture is not built through policy alone. It emerges from consistent decisions made during hiring, onboarding, and day-to-day supervision. Screening for safety behaviors during interviews, closing gaps between academic and workplace expectations, and ensuring structured onboarding all contribute to reducing operational risk.
When these elements are aligned, laboratory leaders create environments where safety is not an external requirement, but an embedded part of how work gets done.
This article was created with the assistance of Generative AI and has undergone editorial review before publishing.
