What Can The Executive Suite Expect From Safety Professionals
Latest article By Phil La Duke on his Blog http://philladuke.wordpress.com/
About a year ago, one of my Facebook friends, a nurse, posted a frothy meme about nurses. “we’re not maids, we’re not you’re kids baby-sitters…” and it went on from there; a post filled with vitriol and resentment for the patients and their families for which they serve. I commented that if she felt such bitterness at her constituency perhaps she should choose a different profession instead of whining about it on social media. I observed that the nobility of any deed is lost when one complains that one does not get one’s proper recognition, appreciation, and accolades. She responded by “defriending” me; good riddance. I’ve seen similar posts from policemen, fireman, and teachers and the common thread—besides being whining malcontents—is the intense lack of judgment shown by people who publicly deride their constituency. I have never trusted people who define themselves in terms of what they aren’t; me thinks the lady doth protest too much.
While I haven’t seen anything posted on Facebook where a safety professional bellyaches about the lack of appreciation shown to him or her, LinkedIn threads are rife with complaints from long suffering safety professionals about those that lead their organizations. From the vague lack of support to accusations of ethics just south of Heinrich Himmler, safety professionals have a lot to say about the executives of their companies and most of it is bad. One common complaint is that even the best-intentioned executive is a slobbering oaf when it comes to safety. Safety professionals say they want more educated leaders but scarce little is done in terms of what the executives should be able to expect from their safety professionals. So what should the executives be able to expect? What are the baseline things that business leaders should be able to count on from any competent safety professional?
Competency
At a most foundational level an executive should be able to count on the safety professional to have mastery level knowledge of safety regulations and compliance. The safety professional should be expected to know and understand what must be reported, how basic regulatory metrics are calculated, how safety data should be interpreted, and where to find more in-depth explanations of the most common safety questions relative to the appropriate industry. There are limits to what the safety professional should know, of course, after all they aren’t lawyers, but the safety professional should be keenly aware of his or her limits and be open with the executive as to where the safety professional’s skill set ends.
Honesty & Integrity
Safety professionals should always be honest with the executives—if it is a good idea to do something then that’s different from it being a legal requirement. Safety professionals who use a liberal interpretation of regulatory requirements to push through a pet project are not to be trusted. It’s this sort of moral flexibility that gets some safety professionals in trouble. Executives need safety professionals to keep them on the right side of the law, not just compliant. In some cases, the performance of the safety professional can be the difference between an executive being charged with a homicide. The honesty and integrity of the safety professional must be above reproach. Conversely, if a safety professional falsifies data, deliberately underreports, or otherwise subverts the law, then the executive may fined him or herself in legal hot water because of what the executive knew or should have known. Executives have the right to expect the safety professional will assertively point out when the executive is dangerously close to a legal or ethical breach.
Neutrality
Safety professionals should be dispassionately reporting the facts. Executives should expect safety data to be free of commentary, sermons, melodrama, or pontifications. The safety professional should be reporting facts, assessing risks, and professionally interpreting trends. The safety professional should then be presenting recommendations that are free from personal agendas and editorializing. An executive needs a recommendation that clearly articulates the expected benefits, risks and rewards, and likelihood of success, not a lot of campaigning for a pet project.
An Informed Opinion
Executives count on experts to guide their decision-making and for that to happen they need the safety professional to distill, often complex data and safety trends into meaningful and useful chunks of information. Too often the executive is given jargon-filled gobbledygook that he or she finds of little use. Most of all, the executive has the right to expect that the safety professional will always understand that no matter how informed the opinion it remains just that: an opinion. Asking one’s opinion is not allowing one the power to make a decision for you.
Professionalism
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Business Savvy
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Respect
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A Clear Definition of “Support”
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