Sustaining a strong safety culture is easy when everything runs smoothly. But what happens when your central Environmental Health and Safety (EHS) department takes a hit from sudden budget cuts, high staff turnover, or scaled-back audit schedules? When that corporate safety net begins to fray, lab safety can easily stall, leaving day-to-day operations exposed to unexpected hazards and compliance gaps.
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, outlined an effective self-sustaining blueprint to address this exact operational vulnerability. He shared how lab leaders can empower their internal teams to set up a structured, peer-to-peer lab inspection program—keeping compliance standards sharp even when institutional resources are lean.
Crowdsourcing the compliance checklist
The first hurdle in establishing a successful internal audit program is overcoming the inevitable resistance from laboratory personnel. Traditional top-down inspections by outside compliance officers often encounter pushback; lab staff frequently dismiss findings, arguing that external inspectors do not understand the unique, highly specialized realities of their day-to-day scientific operations.
To eliminate this friction, Henry recommends fully crowdsourcing the creation of the compliance checklist. Leadership should bring the entire laboratory team together to collaborate on, define, and co-create the internal safety audit criteria.
Henry explained that this collaborative design process fosters immediate ownership over internal standards. “We came up with our own checklist that multiple people were involved in,” Henry said. “They would all go into each other's individual lab with the checklist that they created together, so no one can say ... they don't understand what's going on in here.” By involving technicians and researchers directly in designing the parameters, the team establishes clear responsibility for the standards, removing the typical defense mechanisms associated with external audits.
Framing audits as supportive eyes rather than punitive traps
For a peer-led inspection program to succeed in the long term, Henry notes that it must be completely decoupled from punitive managerial discipline or internal corporate politics. If technicians believe that documenting a blocked eyewash station or calling out an uncooperative colleague will trigger formal reprimands, participation will stall.
Managers must explicitly frame these cross-inspections as a supportive mechanism designed to help, not as a trap to catch personnel who commit violations. Henry pointed out that the program works best when it's introduced simply as an extra pair of eyes on the floor to look things over and offer help. Because the process is entirely non-punitive and no one is at risk of getting into trouble, the fear factor disappears. Stripping away that anxiety naturally lowers staff defensiveness, replacing workplace tension with openness and a genuine sense of shared responsibility.
Navigating the friction of initial competition
While a supportive peer-review system sounds ideal in theory, the initial rollout often reveals a rocky start. When high-performing scientists and technicians are handed an audit checklist and told to evaluate their colleagues, the first round of reviews can trigger intense competitive tension, anxiety, or hypercritical nitpicking.
Henry recalled encountering this exact challenge during his first implementation. To keep the initiative on track, Henry advises lab leaders to actively steer the team past this friction. “I had to stop everything and say, 'Hey, this is not supposed to be a competition here, okay? We're coming in as a unit,” Henry noted. With consistent managerial guidance, that early defensiveness shifts into a collaborative rhythm. The second time, Henry observed that “people were so much more relaxed, and they realized ... we're all just … helping each other out.”
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Establishing the shared space golden rule
A peer-led inspection program proves particularly vital in shared, multidisciplinary laboratory environments where different scientific groups occupy the same physical space. In these settings, personnel frequently fall into the dangerous trap of believing that safety rules only apply to active chemical users.
To challenge this mindset, Henry establishes a strict baseline rule: safety protocols in any shared space must always default to the highest hazard level present. For example, someone stepping into a multi-use room just to look at rock specimens might assume they can bypass personal protective equipment (PPE) since their immediate task is low-risk. Henry directly refutes that assumption. "Just because you're just coming in and looking at rocks, you are still in a lab," he warned, emphasizing that everyone must follow the exact same rules, including wearing proper footwear and other standard protective gear. Even if an individual's immediate work is entirely benign, prior operations on the same lab benches could have left invisible chemical residues or particulate hazards. Enforcing a universal standard across the board is the only way to manage cross-contamination risks around the clock.
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Building a self-reliant culture of protection
Ultimately, a peer-led audit program does more than just fill a temporary gap left by stretched EHS resources. It drives a cultural shift, transforming safety from an external regulatory requirement enforced by outsiders into an internally driven, day-to-day habit. Henry noted that when institutional EHS departments eventually rebuild their inspection schedules, labs that use a peer-led system are routinely found to be in exceptional condition.
Describing what happened when the new EHS team members were finally hired and walked into his facility, Henry recalled telling them that his lab didn't wait around for an official inspection. "We made sure that we were checking on ourselves, and checking on each other," he said. When laboratory teams take direct responsibility for their workspaces, safety ceases to be an intermittent administrative checklist and becomes an organic, self-sustaining part of how the work gets done.
This article was created with the assistance of Generative AI and has undergone editorial review before publishing.
