Safety Manager

About Ready Foods 

Ready Foods is a Denver-based, family-owned food manufacturer on a transformation journey. We are building the next generation of food manufacturing by combining Lean principles, Industry 4.0 technologies, digital transformation and systems thinking. 

Across our 4 Denver facilities, we are creating a connected enterprise that leverages data, automation, continuous improvement and employee expertise to drive better decisions and better outcomes. Our culture is built on respect for people, operational excellence, collaboration and continuous learning. We welcome perspectives from safety, engineering, operations, human factors, ergonomics, organizational development, Lean and other disciplines that can help us design safer, more reliable work. 

About the Role 

Ready Foods is looking for a Safety Manager to lead workplace safety and health while helping us build a more systems-based approach to understanding and reducing risk in our manufacturing operations. 

This role is intentionally broader than a traditional EHS position. We are interested in candidates with strong safety expertise as well as those from adjacent disciplines who understand how people and systems interact. The right person will bring, or be able to quickly develop, strong OSHA and regulatory knowledge while applying Human and Organizational Performance (HOP) and systems thinking to make work safer and more reliable. 

The Safety & Operational Risk Manager will spend meaningful time where work occurs, listen to employees and help teams understand how equipment, processes, procedures, production demands, training and leadership decisions shape safe performance. The role will maintain OSHA compliance, reduce serious risks and use incidents, close calls and everyday operating conditions to improve how work is designed and managed. 

Responsibilities 

• Lead, maintain and continuously improve workplace safety and health programs across Ready Foods facilities 

• Maintain OSHA recordkeeping, reporting and compliance with applicable federal, state and local requirements 

• Identify and reduce significant manufacturing risks, including lockout/tagout, machine guarding, powered industrial trucks, chemical safety, ergonomics, confined spaces and emergency preparedness 

• Build HOP-based safety practices, including learning teams, leadership routines, fair accountability and measures of effectiveness 

• Facilitate reviews of incidents, near misses, employee concerns and unexpected operating conditions to understand how work is actually performed 

• Look beyond individual error to understand equipment conditions, process design, competing priorities, communication, training and organizational influences 

• Partner with Operations, Maintenance, Engineering, FSQA, HR and frontline employees to develop practical controls and sustainable improvements 

• Integrate safety insights into Gemba walks, daily management, leader standard work and continuous-improvement activities 

• Coach managers and supervisors in hazard recognition, systems thinking, effective safety conversations and constructive accountability 

• Monitor leading and lagging indicators and evaluate whether corrective actions meaningfully reduce risk 

Requirements 

• Bachelor's degree or an equivalent combination of education and relevant professional experience 

• Working knowledge of OSHA requirements and industrial risk-management practices, or demonstrated ability to quickly develop the technical knowledge required 

• Understanding of systems thinking and how people, equipment, processes and operational demands interact 

• Strong facilitation, communication, listening and relationship-building skills 

• Ability to engage effectively with frontline employees, supervisors, technical specialists and senior leaders 

• Practical judgment, curiosity and the ability to translate findings into sustainable improvements 

• Willingness to spend significant time on the production floor across Ready Foods facilities 

• Experience in manufacturing, food production or another complex operational environment preferred 

Preferred Experience 

• Human and Organizational Performance, Safety Differently, Safety-II, learning teams or restorative just culture 

• Designing, implementing or sustaining a HOP-based or comparable learning-centered safety system 

• Human factors, ergonomics, organizational learning, systems thinking, industrial engineering, Lean or operational excellence 

• Toyota Production System, Gemba, A3 thinking or Plan-Do-Study-Act 
• Professional safety certification such as CSP, ASP or CIH, plus OSHA 30-Hour and First Aid/CPR, is welcome but not required 

Ready Foods welcomes both traditional and nontraditional pathways into this work. Candidates will be evaluated on demonstrated capability, learning orientation and operational judgment, not solely on years spent in a traditional EHS position. 

The Leader We're Looking For 

You'll be successful here if you believe people are a source of insight and that human error is a starting point for understanding. You spend time where work happens, ask thoughtful questions and involve employees in identifying risks and designing better controls. 

You know that accountability and learning can coexist. You maintain clear expectations and regulatory discipline while responding to mistakes and incidents in a fair, constructive and proportionate way. You look beyond individual actions to understand the broader conditions that shape performance. 

This isn't an opportunity to simply maintain safety programs. It's an opportunity to help Ready Foods build a stronger HOP-based safety and operational risk system where risk reduction and reliable work become shared leadership responsibilities.