The Future for the Safety Professional
Brilliant, mind opening, article by Marie Claire-Ross on her Digicast Blog.
Some excerpts:
In the Industrial age, factories in the western world broke down tasks into smaller tasks so that low paid, uneducated workers could follow simple instructions.
Compliant staff carried out mind-numblingly boring jobs and factory owners had what they wanted - an obedient low-paid workforce. Employees were effectively "cogs in a machine" as Seth Godin points out in the book Linchpin.
Some 300 years later we moved into the Information Age where jobs that required logical, linear and left-brain capabilities thrived. Employees were encouraged to think and do. Lawyers, accountants and even safety professionals did well in their ability to manage rules, play with numbers and reports.
As Daniel Pink says in A Whole New Mind, "the knowledge worker has been the well-educated manipulator of information and deployer of expertise."
Ordinary left-brained dominant safety professionals are like cogs in a machine. Easily replaceable and only doing the work that they believe they are employed to do. Safety manuals. Check. Risk assessments. Check. Safety training. Check.
The new safety professional is not willing to put up with ordinary safety results. She’s ready to do what it takes to inspire a workforce to work safely. He might have to be compliant, for compliance sake, but he’s also prepared to do more than just be compliant. This means making safety communication engaging and enabling employees to understand how it applies to their lives. Why safety matters.
<p>Enjoy the rest of the article here: http://www.digicast.com.au/blog/bid/101103/The-Future-for-the-Safety-Professional
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