The Safety Professional - The Real Role v The Ultimate Role

I have been involved in a few debates / discussions recently about the role of the HSE Advisor / Coordinator / Supervisor / Manager. To be short and sweet, what I hear is that alot of safety people out there are really supervisors who can lead and investigation and conduct an inspection. Albeit to varying standards and normally without any authority to rectify matters. What I also hear is that this is the requirement of the employer. They want a safety person or team and their reasons are good, but they really do not understand the the benefits someone specialized to safety can bring? It's certainly not Lean.

If your company has trained and competent people top down then why do you want a safety person able to do exactly the same? My view has always been that we as safety professionals are there to support and guide. A few of the best safety professionals I have seen actually challenge their workers, especially workers in supervisory or leadership positions. One I worked with had what I think of as a Detective Columbo approach: "so explain to me Mr Project Engineer, how are we going to achieve ???? safely". He was a tad scruffy aswell but he challenged all to convince him that the risk assessment was suitable and sufficient. He also had both the presence and confidence to say "no I am not convinced" if required.

The consumate safety professional will bring a lot more to the table. For me being a skilled people person is vital. What is that? I have lost track of the times I have seen safety people sat alone studying JSAs, SWPs, incident reports etc. I want to see the safety person bringing the subject matter experts to the table to ensure processes, procedures, reports are to the highest possible standard. The real skill is to have these people wanting to come to the table and contributing to the max. If they attend just because they have to then we risk failure. This is along the same lines of workers wearing PPE because they want to avoid discipline and wearing it because they choose to as they want to protect themselves. A positive safety culture in laymans terms.

We 'blame' many incidents on unforeseen events. What I ask is "was it really unforseen"? "Or did we just not get it right"?

There are many other areas of H&S that are not fully utilized such as legal compliance, trending and analysis, ergonomics, muskuloskeletal injuries, wellness and BBSOPs. Unfortunately these and many others (a future post) can be overlooked in order to have another pair of boots on the ground.

Employers please take note!