Ancillary Skills for the Risk and Safety Profession
When you look at what preoccupies conferences and training in safety, you couldnโt help but think that to be a safety person you just need to be a lawyer, a bureaucrat or a police officer. In some organisations the idea of a โsafetyโ position doesnโt even exist rather, they have adopted the language of โzero harm advisorโ, what a nonsense, do you get such a position with a bachelors degree in zero harm? How does one advise on perfection and the absolute, when the agents of actions are fallible humans? If you are a zero harm manager, do you get the sack if anyone is harmed?
When safety people get in the field and begin to converse and relate to โpeople on the toolsโ, they realize they need many skills that were not included in their training, some of these include:
ยท effective communication and collaboration skills
ยท the ability to observe and analyse
ยท critical thinking skills
ยท pastoral care and empathy
ยท understanding human decision making
ยท understanding and generating motivation
ยท knowing the fundamentals of learning
ยท knowing the psychology of risk
ยท understanding culture
ยท expertise in team leadership
ยท knowing how to influence decision making and,
ยท managing organisational politics
So if such knowledge and focus are not emphasized by the safety sector or safety training, where does someone obtain these? Perhaps, the school of โhard knocksโ?
When the fresh and enthusiastic safety graduate first starts at work and encounters someone who is not motivated to safety ownership, what do they do? Perhaps they ask a school teacher who has undertaken extensive studies and field work in the nature of motivation and learning?
When a person walks into the office of the safety advisor and talks of bullying and unsafe work practices, where do they go for skills in pastoral care? Perhaps the local clergy who have done extensive studies and field work in counselling and listening?
When the conflict of production over safety raises its head and the politics of expediency and double standards is confronted, how is that managed? Perhaps they call on the local politician who could educate about the poison of politics? The list could go on but you get the idea.
Why is it that so much of the work of safety people is seduced into the process of legality rather than the humanization of safety? Has safety become so much of an โarse coveringโ exercise that the real intention of safety is being lost? Have we become so consumed by the โcosmetics of safetyโ that we no longer know how to create and influence safety ownership at work?
Prof. Robert Long
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