Informa Markets

Author Bio ▼

Safety and Health Practitioner (SHP) is first for independent health and safety news.
May 12, 2017

Get the SHP newsletter

Daily health and safety news, job alerts and resources

Health & safety professionals have always opened the door to big, important issues

People’s well-being hasn’t always had the senior-level recognition it deserves, in fact only three decades ago, your average workplace health and safety ‘professional’ probably wasn’t. They were more likely to have H&S duties casually tacked onto their other, more important day-to-day jobs.

Back then, in the mid-80s to the late 90s, Steve Beswick was Production Manager at BNFL’s Springfield fuel fabrication plant, when behavioural safety was gaining mainstream acceptance. Now he’s Training and Development Director at Tribe Culture Change (formerly JOMC and Hill-Solomon), and over the course of his career, working with global organisations like Ipsen Pharmaceuticals and Carnival cruise lines, he’s seen health and safety come on in leaps and bounds.

Health and safety professionals Steve BeswickIn this interview, Steve reflects on the changing role of health and safety professionals, how that shaped where we are now and where we might be heading in the future.

The early days of safety management

“Back then many safety management roles were filled by someone near to retirement – someone the company didn’t really know what to do with. There’d be an incumbent, who’d studied to NEBOSH cert level and that was the safety person. So for a long time it wasn’t really up there with other professional roles on site.

“Job titles for people in H&S started as ‘safety officer’, then it became the ‘safety manager’ and these days it can be the ‘safety director’ – which recognises the growing importance and effect safety has on people and business. In fact, you can tell a lot about a company’s culture and its history by the changing job title of their safety person.

“The most significant change happened in the mid-80s to early nineties. In more enlightened organisations, the safety person began to have the ear of management. People started to listen to them. Sadly, everywhere else the safety person was still a voice in the wilderness.

“One thing I’ve noticed over the last 30 years is the safety person has to be increasingly good at sales. They might have a budget to spend, but more often than not they’ve got to go to a budget holder and persuade them to spend money on something. That means being forceful, persistent and presenting a strong argument. Unfortunately some companies still see safety as a cost not an investment.

The changing nature of the safety

“I think legislation helped in the transition, but I’ve seen an increasing realisation that good safety is good business. Not necessarily cold hard finance, but seeing people well at work, looking after them, means you generally get more out of them in return.

“Bizarrely, behavioural safety and putting people first – has been around for a long time and really started motoring in the 70s. But for a long time it was isolated in high-hazard industries like petrochemical, it’s only relatively recently cascaded out into lower-risk areas like food manufacturing. The driver has always been how severe the consequences are [like explosions at an oil refinery]. So if you want to know where H&S is heading, take a look at high-risk areas in knowledge work – air traffic control for example.

“Since the turn of the century, there’s been an increasing recognition of environmental costs. It became very expensive to pollute your surroundings. With all these new threats, like climate change, what happened was boards thought it impractical to have lots of people from many different specialisms on the leadership team, so they looked at who was already on it and it seemed like a good fit for the H&S person. That became the HESS role.

Health and safety is a ‘people thing’

“Now, you’ll quite often find that that person also reports to an HR director, which tells you a lot – that this is definitely a people thing. This isn’t just about boots, hats and discharge limits, it’s about humans and the way they do things. That relationship will probably grow closer, with stress and mental health becoming more of an issue as the nature of work changes.

“We’re seeing it increasingly now. On a sales pitch just the other day, our client’s HR person was really keen to get us involved in their leadership training. If you’re inspiring your leaders on managing teams of people, why not also inspire them to work safely and boost quality and productivity all at the same time?

“I think HS & HR will remain distinct disciplines, but I predict a widespread recognition that the two should work more closely together. This will happen as organisations, not just global leaders, realise that putting people first and having strong cultures is how to build a successful business.

“Looking back now, health and safety got consistently unfair press for being dull and meddlesome – all about clipboards and regulation. But it’s always opened doors to big, important issues – like the increasing move towards happiness at work and being proactive about well-being.”

Steve Beswick is a consultant Training and Development Director for Tribe Culture Change. Originally a Chemical Engineer, he managed culture change at British Nuclear Fuels’ Fuel Division as a Production Manager, then later became a consultant for JOMC Ltd.

The Safety Conversation Podcast: Listen now!

The Safety Conversation with SHP (previously the Safety and Health Podcast) aims to bring you the latest news, insights and legislation updates in the form of interviews, discussions and panel debates from leading figures within the profession.

Find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Google Podcasts, subscribe and join the conversation today!

Subscribe
Notify of
guest

0 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments