10 challenges confronting EHS pros in 2026

1. Keeping pace with the productivity “Miracle”
    Automation, AI, advanced robotics, lean manufacturing, 3D printing, smart manufacturing, predictive maintenance are combining to make the pace of production faster than ever.
    In the context of safety, speed kills.

2. Significant supply chain changes
    Many manufacturers are shifting operations closer to home to reduce exposure to international disruptions and logistics issues. Manufacturers will access local or regional supply networks that can provide faster turnaround times and more flexible production. 

More onboarding and refresher training is needed for new supply partners. New partners must be vetted for safety and health performance and oriented to policies and procedures.

3. Low trust, low engagement and low job satisfaction in organizations
    This is the age of uncertainty. Will AI take my job? Does management really care about me? Will my company have new owners in 3-5 years? These questions can create difficult workplace cultures for safety and health programs to succeed. Safety requires trust, engagement and positive morale. Unknowns and uncertainty undercut trust and engagement, pillars of safety. Gallup: 31% of employees are actively engaged at work; 19% strongly trust leadership of their organization; 54% of middle managers are watching for or actively seeking a new job.

4. Millions of job openings represent a generation change
    The retirement of 75 million Baby Boomers by 2030 is driving a "silver tsunami" of job openings. Manufacturing faces immense vacancies, with an estimated 10.2 million replacements needed by 2030. A "one-in, five-out" trend in trades like construction and electrical work creates a critical shortage. This is a significant loss of situational awareness and institutional memory of “the way things are done around here” — key to hazard awareness and knowledge of where the next incident will occur, and why.
    Incoming young workers 29 years of age and under — Gen Z with a population of 70-73 million — are a different breed. Quicker to change jobs, less loyal, less trusting, less engaged, less satisfied, less likely to believe someone at work cares about them and more unhappy. Many have work that feels pointless, insecure and disconnected from any sense of purpose. They face more gig work, declining bargaining power, and vanishing career ladders.
    These are the new and incoming frontline workers. Their attitudes can make them less interested in safety and health activity. OSHA reports that new employees are five times more likely to get injured than more seasoned employees. This is compounded by the psychosocial stress felt by young workers.

5. Declining OSHA enforcement and strong reg rollback efforts
    Democratic lawmakers cited OSHA data showing a 20% drop in inspections and a 42% decrease in willful violations during April 2025 to September 2025. A June 2025 report by the DOL inspector general: 736 federal inspectors in June 2025 down from 846 in February 2024. OSHA has lost nearly 300 employees since Trump took office according to government workforce data. Proposed reg rollbacks, fewer inspections, no standards being pushed forward, proposed office closures — all could erode employee trust and the perceived value of safety and health.

6. Executive decisions influenced by unpredictable factors
    Business decisions, including EHS resourcing and marching orders, are leaning toward cautious conservatism as they are influenced by an unprecedented mix of unpredictable tariffs and profound international financial problems, tumultuous federal governing, political winds that are pushing OSHA back of mind, public health and climate science reversals, and priority investments in scaling up AI that often do not include safety and health because it is often not perceived as mission critical.

7. Senior leaders backing off safety and health support
    Numerous sources tell ISHN that executives are more prone to cutting EHS budgets and staff — “putting pros in straitjackets” according to one source. Many senior leaders are dictating that pros take a narrow path forward with programs, keep it simple, with no innovation, emphasize back to basics, limit priorities and other frustrating top-down expectations. ISHN has been told of pros asked to cut corners leaving companies out of compliance, with some expected to build sub-compliant safety and health programs

8. Broader and more diverse EHS responsibilities
    New responsibilities further complicate roles for teams that are strapped for time and resources — duties can include safety, health, environment, wellness, psychosocial health, supply chain management, security, quality, sustainability, emergency preparedness — plus audits, coaching, field engagement, compliance requirements, training, risk identification and analysis, risk controls, communications, reporting and recordkeeping and more.

9. EHS ethics are under pressure
    With low levels of trust, engagement and often leadership support, professionals face a pivotal choice, EHS ethics expert Mark Katchen tells ISHN: operate narrowly as compliance technicians or operate as professionals exercising independent ethical judgment. “The future credibility of the field may depend on which path is chosen,” Katchen says.

10. AI maturity for EHS pros requires upskilling
    AI is still in its infancy in the EHS field. While AI adoption is widespread throughout industry, most organizations are still using it primarily for administrative task support, says Benchmark Gensuite CEO R. Mukund. Generative tools are helping to draft documentation, summarize incident reports, and prepare for audits. Those uses improve efficiency, but they do not by themselves reduce exposure to hazards or prevent incidents, he says.
    Most pros place their programs at an early stage of adoption, according to a number of surveys.
    AI is something of the “wild, wild west” right now with deployments all over the board, says one EHS observer who has conducted AI surveys. The safety and health field “is chomping at the bit” to adopt artificial intelligence adopt artificial intelligence, says Tom Goodmanson, CEO of EcoOnline. But moving forward will require pros to be savvy AI shoppers, learn how to sell the ROI of AI for safety and health applications, and they must learn how tools work, the art of phrasing prompts, the need for guardrails and privacy with worker health data, and the deft touch to balance AI with professional judgment.

Dave Johnson was chief editor of ISHN from 1980 until early 2020. He uses his decades of expertise to write on hot topics and current events in the world of safety. He also writes and edits at Dave Johnson’s Writing Shop LLC and is editor-at-large for ISHN.