New Book Aims to Simplify Safety Program Development for Small Businesses
"Health and Safety Programs in Small and Medium-Sized Businesses: Setting Them Up and Making Them Work Effectively" offers practical guidance to help organizations.
- By Stasia DeMarco
- Jan 29, 2026
A new book by safety consultant Greg G. Zigulis is designed to help small and mid-sized businesses build effective workplace health and safety programs, addressing a common gap for organizations with limited safety resources.
Health and Safety Programs in Small and Medium-Sized Businesses: Setting Them Up and Making Them Work Effectively, published by Routledge, is aimed at business owners, managers, and safety professionals who are often assigned responsibility for safety program development without formal training in occupational health and safety.
Zigulis said he wrote the book to help leaders understand “what regulatory and other drivers for safety programs exist” and to share information that can be useful when setting up a safety system or program. Rather than offering a collection of templates, he said the book serves as “a primer on the business drivers and injury prevention concepts that underpin a successful safety culture and processes.”
The book focuses on foundational elements of safety program development, including identifying safety requirements, understanding injury causation, structuring program components, and prioritizing implementation. It also addresses the distinction between safety programs and safety management systems, a topic Zigulis said is frequently misunderstood in smaller organizations.
Zigulis, who has more than four decades of experience in safety consulting and standards development, said he intentionally included practical information that can be difficult to find in a single resource. The book identifies safety resources and links that can serve as “great go-to information,” while also addressing “some of the ‘how’ of program architecture” to help organizations remain compliant and functional.
He said the goal is to give leaders “the mental framework” to understand not only what is legally mandated, but what is professionally necessary to effectively manage risk. Zigulis described the book as “the resource I wish I had when I started working in safety,” particularly for those newly tasked with building a safety program and asking, “Where do I begin?”
About the Author
Stasia DeMarco is the Content Editor for OH&S.