I find it comical all these people who think they are Safety. How strange this industry that ‘anchors’ someone so hard to an Archetype as a persona (Jung) that one thinks a criticism of safety is a criticism of them. How peculiar. Even the most fundamental understanding of linguistics and grammar … [Read more...] about You are NOT the Sum of Safety
Safety Professional
Researching Within The Safety Echo Chamber
One of the most reliable things about Safety is that it has no interest in broad diverse research nor what it means to be professional. Such is the safety code that always describes what it is by what it isn’t. The latest example is the AIHS BoK Chapter 39 (2nd Edn) ‘The OHS Professional as a … [Read more...] about Researching Within The Safety Echo Chamber
Communicating Professionally in Risk
The foundations of communicating and messaging is: framing, priming, pitching, anchoring, reframing and suspending agenda. We learn this in many SPoR programs as a foundation for understanding communication and influencing effectiveness. We use a simple tool shown at Figure 1. Language … [Read more...] about Communicating Professionally in Risk
How NOT to be Professional in Safety
Imagine going to your parent teacher evening and sitting down to discuss your child’s progress at the school and professional teacher describes your child’s challenges in school as a ‘hazard’. Imagine your child is having issues with bullying and is upset about it and approaches a teacher who … [Read more...] about How NOT to be Professional in Safety
How to Leave the Safety Industry
Related Post: I'm Just Not That Into Safety Anymore I regularly get contacts from people who want to leave the safety industry and don’t know how. Most often these people enter the industry with a passion for care and helping others. They often have a passion for learning. It doesn’t take long … [Read more...] about How to Leave the Safety Industry
Tape Down Those Leads
Tape Down Those Leads One of the things that is curiously entertaining in safety is a lack of proportionality and critical thinking. I often present in facilities where arrangements have not been considered for how workshops are presented, including: lighting, power leads, power points, desks, … [Read more...] about Tape Down Those Leads
Three Lessons in How to be Unprofessional
Three Lessons in How to be Unprofessional One of the critical skills of professionalism is Discourse Analysis. It is through Discourse Analysis that we understand the power in messages revealing: ethic, politick and motive. Discourse Analysis is also foundational to Social Psychology. You … [Read more...] about Three Lessons in How to be Unprofessional
You Can Put Safety Into Engineering but, You Can’t Get Engineering Out of Safety
‘A person cannot possibly seek what he knows, and, just as impossibly, he cannot seek what he does not know, for what he knows he cannot seek, since he knows it, and what he does not know he cannot seek, because, after all, he does not even know what is supposed to seek.’ (Kierkegaard, 1844). If … [Read more...] about You Can Put Safety Into Engineering but, You Can’t Get Engineering Out of Safety
The Safety Professional Myth
Continuing our series on Safety Myths – see them all here I was sent this image recently and it says it all about the myth of the safety professional (see Figure 1. SP Myth) Figure 1. SP Myth As we have been asserting in this series on myths: all symbols that embed ideology are mythical. The … [Read more...] about The Safety Professional Myth
Not a Profession’s Bootlace
How easy to let that word ‘professional’ roll off your tongue, when you are not in a profession! How easy to brand something that it is not and then wonder why people walk away in droves (icare-workers-compensation-insider-speaks-out). How easy to spruik zero harm when it’s the opposite … [Read more...] about Not a Profession’s Bootlace