Kelly Trent on Building Safety Systems That Work in the Real World

For Kelly Trent, effective safety is not built from policies that sit untouched in a binder or programs that look impressive on paper. It is built in the field, through conversations with the people doing the work, and through systems that reflect how operations function when the day is busy, high-pressure, and unpredictable. 

With 16 years of experience across environmental health and safety, Kelly has worked in aluminum recycling, beverage manufacturing and warehousing, heavy industrial manufacturing, semiconductors, aerospace, and construction. That range has given her a clear perspective on what makes a safety system successful and what causes it to fail. 

Her strongest area of knowledge, she says, is building systems that people will actually use. 

“I avoid policies or programs that only look good on paper,” Kelly says. “I focus on tools, processes, and expectations that frontline team

s and operational leaders can actually use when the work is busy, messy, and high-pressure.” 

When Safety Programs Drift Away from the Work 

One of the clearest warning signs of a disconnected safety program, Kelly explains, is when documentation tells one story, and the field tells another. 

“If what you’re getting is a perfect set of answers in that inspection every month, and when you show up to your facility, you see a very different story. There’s a disconnect there,” she says. 

That disconnect is not always intentional. Sometimes it comes from a learning gap. Sometimes it comes from time pressure, unclear expectations, or a process that simply does not fit the work being done. For Kelly, the solution starts with curiosity. 

“You have to spend time in the field and know the people performing the tasks,” she says. “When you start talking to people, you can usually gauge pretty quickly how well they understand the ask, whether they think it adds value, and whether they understand the why.” 

That middle piece, whether people see value in the process, is especially important. If workers do not understand why a tool matters, they are far more likely to treat it as a checkbox. 

“If they don’t see value in it, they’re probably not doing it the way you want them to,” Kelly says. “You have to figure out where the disconnect is.” 

When Leadership Intentions Don’t Reach the Field 

Kelly has seen organizations where leadership genuinely believes in safety, but the message does not fully reach the field. Senior leaders may have strong values and good intentions, but operational pressure, communication gaps, or unclear systems can prevent those values from translating into daily action. 

“What you feel from the field and what you get from the leadership team can be two very different perspectives,” Kelly explains. “A lot of companies have leadership teams with really amazing intentions, but somewhere in the middle, the systems and processes are not allowing those values to translate down to the field.” 

For safety leaders, that means taking the time to understand where things are breaking down before trying to fix them. 

“Do not let your previous experiences filter or interfere with how you’re trying to interpret a problem in a new organization,” she says. “You need to come at it with fresh eyes.” 

That means asking open-ended questions, learning how teams actually operate, and taking time to understand the pressures faced by frontline leaders. Kelly believes those leaders are one of the most critical parts of safety execution. 

“It doesn’t matter what your senior executive team feels and believes,” she says. “If your frontline leaders are not making people feel that you’re probably not getting what you want out of your programs.” 

The Human Side of Safety 

For Kelly, safety must connect to something real. Policies and procedures matter, but they only become meaningful when people understand the human reason behind them. 

Early in her career, Kelly experienced an incident that permanently shaped the way she viewed safety. She was working in an aluminum mill on the south side of Chicago when an employee became trapped inside a machine during a lockout incident. 

“I was no more than six months into my career,” she recalls. “I had to sit next to him for 27 minutes while he was stuck inside that machine with mechanics cutting the machine apart, trying to get him out, EMTs hooking him up to fluids, just sitting there talking to him, trying to keep him distracted.” 

It was not something any textbook or training program had prepared her for. 

“When you go to college for this, no one presents you with that scenario,” Kelly says. “They teach you how to read the regulations. They teach you how to set up a safety program. No one prepares you to sit next to a human being stuck inside a machine.” 

That moment now informs how she trains leaders, especially when discussing incident management, near misses, and high-potential events. 

“None of you want to be in that seat where you’re having to call someone’s significant other or sit next to them,” she tells leaders. “I hope none of you ever have to do that. But take a moment and imagine if you did. How would you feel?” 

Safety Lives in the Gray 

Kelly’s advice to new safety professionals is direct: regulations and processes matter, but they are not enough on their own. 

“Processes are great, but if you don’t understand humans, your processes mean nothing,” she says. 

She also believes safety professionals need to become comfortable with ambiguity. While some areas of EHS, especially environmental compliance, can be blacker and whiter from a regulatory standpoint, safety often requires judgment, adaptation, and practical problem-solving. 

“Safety lives in the gray,” Kelly says. “Most regulations tell you to control hazards. They don’t tell you that you have to slice the orange in a certain way. They tell you to slice the orange and do it in a way that doesn’t hurt someone.” 

That mindset is especially important when working with experienced employees who have been doing the same job for years. Kelly is not trying to ask a welder with decades of experience to reinvent the wheel. She is trying to understand the work well enough to help them do it safely. 

“It’s operational skill,” she says. “It’s not something separate. It’s part of the work.” 

Learning from the People Who Know the Work Best 

Experienced workers bring deep knowledge, but Kelly also recognizes that experience can create a different kind of risk. 

“Almost every one of the people that I’ve dealt with who has been hospitalized has been an extremely skilled, knowledgeable person who was insanely good at their job,” she says. “They didn’t catch what was different today than yesterday because they were insanely good at their job.” 

That is why observation matters. Kelly recalls advice from a former leader: if you want to find the most unsafe way to do something, follow the mechanic everyone relies on to fix the toughest problems. 

“You will find all the shortcuts, all the ways people don’t want to tell you things get done,” she says. 

But Kelly cautions against reacting too quickly when you see something unexpected. 

“Sometimes you just have to shut your mouth and watch,” she says. “You’re going to get more juice from your squeeze if you just let them operate.” 

Those shortcuts may reveal risk, but they may also reveal efficiency, ingenuity, or a better way of doing the work. The safety professional’s job is to understand what is happening, then determine where a layer of protection or control can be added. 

“If you freak out, they’re going to shut down,” Kelly says. “Then they’re not going to show you the honest truth of how they work anymore.” 

Building Systems That Scale 

Kelly describes her safety superpower as taking complex safety, compliance, operational, and people challenges and turning them into clear, usable, scalable systems. 

The first step, she says, is bringing the right people to the table. 

“I need to be able to explain this to the welder just as well as the executive leader,” she says. “We all need to come together and agree on how we move forward.” 

That does not mean trying to build a world-class safety system overnight. In fact, Kelly believes that approach often fails. 

“If I try to start with a world-class safety system when we’re down here, that’s not going to work,” she says. “You have to identify the core elements, get everyone on board with a couple of things, and then keep adding new plays year after year until it becomes part of the operational skill set.” 

In her current role, that has included building a more centralized digital safety system, improving fleet safety through better visibility and coaching, and simplifying the overall safety management system so it can scale across a growing business. 

That growth has been significant. Kelly’s organization acquired three companies in one quarter alone, making scalable systems even more important. 

“When you cover more than a handful of sites, paper is not sustainable,” she says. “You have to figure out how to create a standard but make it flexible enough that it feels like it fits.” 

For Kelly, standardization should never mean forcing every team into the same rigid process. A monthly inspection requirement, for example, may need different versions for different parts of the business. 

“How do you make it as user-friendly as possible?” She speaks. “You don’t want people pencil-whipping questions that mean nothing because there are 25 questions on the form that have nothing to do with the business, they operate in.” 

Trust Cannot Be Built from a Desk 

Kelly believes culture change takes time, even when the right people are committed. 

“You cannot build trust overnight,” she says. “You can’t build a learning culture overnight.” 

Over the past year, she has visited 70 locations across 30 states. That travel was intentional. She knew the most important thing she could do was build trust with the teams she supported. 

“I’m on the boat with you,” she tells them. “I’m here so I can know how you work. I can help meet you where you are.” 

That local understanding matters because safety excellence will not look the same in every region or operation. 

“How I get you to compliance or how I get you to safety excellence is not going to look the same in California as it is in Alabama,” Kelly says. “If I try to do that from my desk, I’m going to miss the nuance.” 

A Practical View of Technology and AI 

Kelly regularly looks at ASSP, the National Safety Council, OSHA updates, regulatory registers, LinkedIn, podcasts, and industry events to stay current. She also values conferences and expos for the opportunity to see new technology in person. 

However, she is thoughtful about where technology is useful and where caution is needed. 

At a recent ASSP conference, Kelly noticed how heavily the safety technology conversation had shifted toward AI. While she sees value in AI as a tool, she believes safety and environmental professionals need to be careful, especially when using it for regulatory research. 

“I would very much hesitate for early-career hires to use it that way,” she says. “Especially on the environmental side.” 

Kelly has seen AI tools hallucinate incorrect answers and even invent regulations. For experienced professionals, those errors may be easier to catch. For someone new to the field, they could create real risk. 

“If you are doing something regulatory based, go to the EPA website, go to the state environmental website, go to whoever your jurisdiction is,” she says. “Do not trust these AI tools to interpret complex environmental regulations correctly.” 

Her advice is not to avoid AI entirely, but to understand its limitations. 

“When you’re talking about safety training and communications, or asking it to make something sound better, sure,” she says. “But I would caution young professionals against using it as a research tool.” 

Advice for the Next Generation of Safety Professionals 

For new safety professionals, Kelly’s advice is simple: build relationships with operations. 

“There is a lot of value in having EHS peers,” she says. “You need those people because there are going to be days where you feel like you’re crazy. But you need your ops people. You will live and die by your frontline leaders.” 

Those relationships help safety professionals understand what makes teams tick, how programs will be received, and whether a new process will feel meaningful support or just more work. 

“Make some friends with them,” Kelly says. “Know what makes them tick because that is going to help you make better decisions.” 

Systems for People, Not Paper 

Across every industry Kelly has worked in, her philosophy has remained consistent: safety systems must serve the people doing the work. 

That means listening before changing. Observing before correcting. Understanding the operation before building the system. And remembering that the ultimate goal is not a perfect form, a polished policy, or a flawless dashboard. 

The goal is to protect people. 

“We need systems,” Kelly says. “But we have to remember people are the ones that use systems.”