By Anna Keen, Founder of Acre Frameworks.
A little over a month ago I hit the streets of London to understand what the Great British Public’s perception of Health and Safety was; this was the result:
Acre Frameworks: Health & Safety Stereotypes and Perceptions
Not very complimentary is it? But if we are all honest is it that unfair? How many of you have interviewed or met people that fuel this stereotype?
When I first started recruiting in Health and Safety it was all about compliance, enforcement and rule following. The roles attracted many individuals whose personality preferences aligned to this. They enjoyed following rules, telling people what to do and they didn’t trust people to do the right thing.
I hope most of us would agree that if we aspire to achieve compliance alone it won’t get people home safe at the end of the day. We need to empower those in our workplaces and change not just their behaviours but their beliefs; we need to do Health and Safety differently.
Having worked closely with John Green and Safety Differently we know there is momentum within the profession to change. If we are to deliver this change through recognising people as the solution, removing the bureaucracy and focusing on the positives we need to accept that the skill-set of those in the profession needs to change. We need to re-focus development and we need to stop fuelling the stereotype.
What does this skill-set look like? I am privileged to work with some of the most passionate, innovative and engaging individuals who are driving change in their organisations and across the industry. I wanted to define what makes these people different. What makes them effective and ultimately successful?
So I did something really innovative, I asked them! I have spent the last six months working with senior leaders to understand and define which non-technical competencies were critical for success.
Through the use of the assessment tool we have started to understand the personality preferences of leaders in Health and Safety. We have profiled leaders from Crossrail, Laing O’Rourke, Vodafone, Royal Mail and ISS to name but a few. I want to share with you some of the findings that were particularly interesting which definitely challenge the stereotype:
In order to be successful you have to actually demonstrate behaviours that are quite the opposite of the stereotype. You need to want to understand others, challenge past approaches and look for the positives. The role has changed but the brand hasn’t.
What if every person in the profession dedicated as much time to developing critical behaviours as they do developing their technical knowledge? What if the ability to demonstrate these competencies carried as much weight as qualifications? Would it allow us to drive positive change in organisations and would it allow us to attract talent into the profession? Would it allow a Health and Safety leader to be considered with the same credibility for a promotion to COO as their peers? Would it allow us to rebrand?
How do we do this? Let’s start by understanding where we are:
It is my hope that if we do this we can make small changes at the individual and organisational levels that can make a big impact across the profession as a whole.
I ask you to take some time to reflect on this. Whether it’s through utilising the Acre Frameworks tool or by good old fashioned reflection, take a long hard look at the impact you and your teams are having and ask yourself what am I doing to Re-brand Health and Safety?
Anna Keen is founder of Acre Frameworks.
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Nice to see how a “survey” of some people in London is representative of the UK’s view of H&S, were any safety professionals, injured persons or families of those injured interviewed?
Or even the directors of organisations found guilty of breaking the law in terms of H&S asked for their opinion, and if any of these individuals thought it was all “red tape” and stopping people having “fun”.
“But if we are all honest is it that unfair?”: yes this is an unfair representation and massive generalisation of a highly professional and dedicated industry, we are not “killjoys” who according to the author:
“When I first started recruiting in Health and Safety it was all about compliance, enforcement and rule following. The roles attracted many individuals whose personality preferences aligned to this. They enjoyed following rules, telling people what to do and they didn’t trust people to do the right thing”
Education and continual development of IOSH members is not simply “enforcing rules” and somehow enjoying it, industry has moved on and looks to involve and educate workers and management on the actual benefits of compliance.
This kind of article again promotes the red tape “burden” argument and is not an effective method I the continual battle to educate management and workers.
This needs a full and frank debate from IOSH and SHP and am happy to discuss further how we can progress this.
Anna,
YES – some of us have been saying this for a long time.
The problem with re-branding is that you have to address the sterotype from both ends at once. We have to change as professionals (some of us did that a long time ago), AND we have to get the media to change as well.
Whilst the Daily Mail and others continue to pump out anti-health and safety messages we will not change the image of our profession. This is why it is so important to challenge the lies and untruths EVERY time we encounter them.
Only when the general public see us as being the PRE-Emergency service (i.e. preventing the emergency) will we get respected and listened to. Perhaps IOSH could do some AA style adverts (not the 4th Emergency service but the service that prevents the emergency) featuring people who are alive because of us.
There is a lot more than skill sets to change opinions – many of us went through those changes a decade or more ago – it needs something more dramatic than that on its own. Perhaps we should all start to also talk about the lives saved. I can personally point to several incidents where people lived because of what I changed – but just try getting a good news story into the media!
I teach on numerous courses, and every time the first thing that has to be addressed (never on the syllabus though) is that H&S is about ENABLING things to happen SAFELY, not preventing. This is to people who want into the profession. So the critical question – how do we get the “opinion formers” to listen and change?
As ever, people with virtually no H&S risk (interviewed in Central London’s busy office centre) are asked their opinions on matters that hardly touch them, if you asked the same questions anywhere on a building site, heavy industry, recycling plant or transport operation you would get less articulate but more relevant answers.
The reality is that H&S does need rebranding because many of the practitioners are encouraged to over-specify and overkill all the risks – not in an attempt to make the work safer, but ensure that the job cannot be completed without breaking those rules. The effect is that when the something goes wrong the hierarchy and their insurers can examine the scene and truthfully claim that the IP has broken the rules.
What utter rubbish from the two other commentators. The point of the video, I think, was to ask people NOT INVOLVED in H&S what they thought of Health & Safety. And they got it right. Our industry is stuck in the past and has a really bad public image! Surely if the likes of Crossrail, LOR, Vodafone, Royal Mail etc etc are using this tool to move things forward, surely we need to be seriously considering this?
I appreciate that this issue will stimulate debate, but it is one we need to have, not “utter rubbish”. Successive governments own commissioned reports have not backed up this theory that we are drowning in red tape and we need to understand the motivations behind them.
Acceptance and use of terms like “burdens” and red tape are unhelpful, the move by J. Hackitt to the EEF shows the lack of interest the HSE has and the influence business has on the current way H&S is treated and the agendas in place.
Anna said at her launch, that it is a shame that a profession which is all about saving lives should be viewed so negatively. I agree with this – I am tired of defending a profession which does such a lot of good, to people who have swallowed the Daily Mail line. Yet we do have the opportunity to look at how we drive change in perception. Please enter the debate here – or for live debate come to Safety and Health Expo where John Green is delivering a keynote address about Safety Differently, and Anna Keen is involved in a debate about Rebranding Health and Safety.
To be honest all this article and the personality test is picking up on the latest recruitment techniques to weed out the safety policeman to the safety personality. As a safety professional these days you have to wear many different hats and personalities to win people over and to convince them to follow your lead. Culture based safety was the buzzword ten years ago and it was rule based compliance before that. God knows what the future holds for the safety professional you now have to be qualified on four fronts (health, safety, environmental and quality) what next personality qualification to prove you can communicate effectively !!
As a Trades Union Health and Safety Rep. and a NEBOSH qualified H&S practitioner I find that the ‘publics’ perception is driven by the press miss-reporting the misuse of H&S, often by lazy managers who use the H&S tag to ban something, which if they hadn’t used the H&S tag would simply be laughed at as ridiculous. In doing this the press seem to have an agenda, far too similar the current governments agenda, which seeks to rubbish and reduce ‘Health and Safety’ at every opportunity. Yes for some organisations H&S is little more than a tickbox exercise, and lazy managers do misuse H&S far too often, equally some managers see H&S as interfering with their autonomy and ability to deliver quickly and cheaply, forelock tugging ex-non-commissioned officers especially and avoid doing RAMS at any oppotunity. Would a rebranding help? In some ways possibly, though the recent deaths at Didcot show a lot of people don’t want to understand that proper safe systems of work that are part of the delays in recovering the bodies are essential to prevent further deaths and injury. Everyone wants to go home safe and sound after a days work, but fighting for their right to do so is a never ending battle at times.
Really good article, but the findings are not a surprise. It’s possibly not re-branding that needs to happen rather that people need to know what is now described as ‘Blue Tape’ . Requirements set out by insurers are big companies in an effort to protect their interests.
H&S practioners for years have been the butt of jokes and many I’ve seen do fit into the stereotype but certainly not all. Those of us who have embraced the risk management ethos as opposed to risk averse need to be sharing that message with colleagues and empowering them. We’re surely in the best place to do it as we transcend commercial boundaries.
Lets share our best practice approaches to engaging stakeholders. Lets stand up and challenge the ‘blame H&S people’. Most of us do this job because we feel it fits with our personal belief system.
Wonderful, I have been subject to the stupidity of health and safety officers and frequently see examples on TV.but the same problem occurs elsewhere and I think we should apply this logic to many other professional groups Accounting and Law Enforcement are two that jump to mind. (I am an ex Company Accountant)
I agree we have a bad press and rightly so. Many of us have been saying for a long time that the route to becoming a safety professional is not fit for purpose. Unless you get NEBOSH & IOSH on the bus it will never change!
Apart from the fact that I sometimes despair when I see rules such as “All employees must wear safety glasses when using the coffee machine in the head office city building” – aa line in a lecture called “Simply Silly Safety”, I do have hope that the work of Pam Pryor and the accreditation and certification processes in Australia will take hold. Safety professionals need to have a working knowledge of science, engineering, cognition, management planning, investigation, literacy and numeracy to be recognised as contributors. The “hats and boots” compliance role of safety has a place, but not for someone professing to be professional (!)
Some really interesting comments and observations made by readers. First, the article is promoting something (Acre Fameworks) but I’m not sure what.
Today is all about ‘change’ it seems, previous perceptions were all wrong! The reality is nothing is ever perfect, there is always room for improvement. Whether the author has judged the climate right or just seling their wares is a matter for conjecture.
I agree the compliance ethos needs to be selective. As a h&s practitioner I would rather focus on organisations protecting people for altruistic reasons rather than just simply compliance. In the real world, however, organisations are driven by compliance – at least the better ones, whereas the others do as little as they can get away with. So who/what needs to change?