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 source of this image is from a safety magazine that amplifies much safety mythology. In this case the image is branded an ‘infographic’.
All images, symbols and graphics reveal the ideology of the designer and what is presented, mis-presented, represented and omitted, talks much about what identity is being sought. This is how myths are created.
Myths are not real but are made true by an industry that makes symbols a new truth.
Just look at what this article states is the role of a person in safety:
- ‘Keeping up with their continuing professional development;
- Complying with the correct personal protective equipment, aware of the latest innovations in PPE and how to procure them;
- Legislation is the foundation stone of the health and safety profession – it’s key for a modern health and safety professional to be on top of any legislative changes’
Just keep repeating the language of ‘safety professional’, repeat it incessantly and believe it. This is the myth. Then ensure silence on all the characteristics of professionalism required to be professional such as ethics, helping and care.
I have written about this incongruence previously:
- https://safetyrisk.net/advice-for-new-safety-professionals/
- https://safetyrisk.net/keep-counting-every-time-you-dont-achieve-your-goal-thats-professional/
- https://safetyrisk.net/not-a-professions-bootlace/
- https://safetyrisk.net/no-secrets-and-the-professionalisation-of-safety-knowledge/
- https://safetyrisk.net/three-lessons-in-how-to-be-unprofessional/
- https://safetyrisk.net/professional-challenges-for-the-risk-industry/
So have a quick look at the symbol projected in this image. Look how Safety wishes to define itself!
- Safety clearly understands itself as standing on books of legislation.
- It holds technology as its tool of choice and assumes that this is what communication is. BTW, there is no program on effective communication in any safety curriculum. Safety is the industry of telling NOT listening. Sadly, Safety is NOT trained to communicate.
- PPE is sadly the primary focus of the practitioner and technology a means to do more paperwork.
- The goal of Safety is to keep on top of legislation, which they will never use and will never be called on in a court of law. The reality is a legal professional will be called to ‘help’.
- Then we have this weird thing called CPD. Safety is NOT interested in learning but rather regurgitation, compliance and mono-disciplinarity.
- CPD really means Confirmation bias, Persistence Disorder.
There are many more assumptions embedded in this myth that are disturbing and certainly nothing that SPoR focuses on (https://safetyrisk.net/spor-and-myth/ ) is anywhere in the gaze of this industry.
Sadly, the most demanding and professional things required by safety people in practice are never offered by this professional myth:
- Safety people first and foremost need skills in engagement never offered in their training.
- Safety needs to focus on persons and risk.
- Safety people are never offered the education needed in critical thinking skills.
- Safety people most want skills in helping and caring, and methods to ensure people are primary in enactment.
- They also need a moral philosophy not based on duty but care.
Such is the safety professional myth.
Dr Rob Long
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- The Fallible Factor and What to Do About It - July 6, 2025
- Hiding Harm in the Name of Safety - July 6, 2025
Wynand says
Interesting how the “infographic” depicts the “professional” as the formally dressed executive with boardroom access and the “practitioner” as the one working at the “coalface”. In my experience, the real professional often gets into the trench and gets dirty as well. Think lawyers, nurses, and doctors. They can never fulfil their “professional” roles by avoiding the mess of real life. In my mind, all the “safety” personnel have been practitioners, most often even bullies, but none of them ever appeared to be “professional”. In my experience, as they move higher up into the ranks, focus on compliance, systems and controls increase and professionalism decreases. As the picture rightly says, a safety “professional” should influence directors at the board level, and if the policies of most companies show, they either influence the incorrect directions or (more likely) get cues from the (typically uninformed) board to “Zero Harm” the company.
Jason says
Hi Rob,
again a robust assessment of the toxic and narcissistic traits of safety. Interestingly I facilitate Health and Safety Representatives courses for state and commonwealth and there is a fairly large focus on communication skills within the course, but I must admit I also spend much more time and go much deeper on the subject than what is required. The participants also find this part of the course the most important in most cases, as the outcomes in the workplace for a HSR are dependent on how well they can engage with all the different people around them. I spend most of the time reinforcing the message that safety depends on communication and relationships not the legislative requirements. I have had so many people say why don’t managers and safety people do the HSR training. It’s far from perfect but I think the sessions I run maybe help fill the void that traditional safety thinking creates when they return to their workplaces. Hopefully it’s a small step in the right direction that maybe starts change from the grassroots, at least that’s what I tell myself so I can keep going in the face of the Zero Harm idiocy. Cheers!
Rob Long says
Jason, thanks and congratulations on your work. Unfortunately when safety speaks about communication it means telling. I know of no course in safety anywhere that teachers skills in UPR, discourse, open questioning, power, listening of basic counselling skills. Communication is much more than policing regulations and hazards.
It’s good that you go beyond this but such is the immaturity of safety that it thinks noise is communication. And telling is learning.
Unfortunately the focus of communication for HSRs is mostly focused on conducting meetings. This is not communication either.
Every time I’m asked to supervise executives on observation walks I never met one who can ask an open question and listen.
The favourite word for safety is ‘control’ and if that’s your focus you will never know how to listen.
Listening is the beginning of being professional.
CS says
What do you mean by open questioning—open-ended questions?
Rob long says
That’s different
wynand says
Your comment “why don’t managers and safety people do the HSR training” struck a chord with me. I have had the privilege of getting better than average HSR training, and this question popped up in conversation often. Sadly, even in this training, the concept of HSR assisting management in policing often was implied. One thing I did as SHE rep was to make sure the people who were scared of management (and there were many) had a voice through me. In the end, as Rod Long says, compliance, policing and controlling were the terms used in practice, and all the rational concepts discussed in class disappeared the moment one stepped out of the classroom and into BBS territory.
Rob Long says
Wynand, no matter who I have spoken to they hate BBS.
BBS is always good for other people.
BBS is always packaged as effective! At what?
The byproducts of BBS is always brutalism, bashings and bullying.
Wynand says
Rob, This was my experience also. What I meant with “BBS territory” was that once one leaves the classroom, everything reverts back to behaviourism-as-safety, with all the bashings, bullying and brutalism associated with it.
Brent Charlton says
Everybody hates BBS except those profiting from sales of their BBS system.