It’s a common debate on this website – should wellbeing sit with HR or HS? Sue Parker- Tantush was resistant at first but now welcomes it as part of the safety framework.
I’ve been a health and safety professional for many years, and in that time, I’ve witnessed a lot of change. I’m no longer one of the few women at conferences; our profession has been elevated (particularly post-Covid); and there’s been a real shift toward health and safety leadership. All of this change I’ve welcomed, not only for our profession but for the health and safety of employees too. Raising the profile of health and safety leaders can only be a positive movement toward keeping people safe and ultimately that’s why we do what we do.
However, there was one change that emerged a few years ago, pre-Covid that, candidly, I really did push against – that of safety professionals becoming wellbeing managers. It wasn’t the concept of looking after the wellbeing of employees, as I see that as putting the ‘health’ into health and safety, it was more that the accountability of delivering it sat with us.
At every EHS conference I would see increasing amounts of wellbeing sessions intermingled with the more traditional, technical talks, and often led by safety professionals who now suddenly had wellbeing as part of their job title. We love collecting qualifications in this profession and I wanted to shout, “But I’m not qualified to deal with this. Why can’t it sit with HR?”
Having difficult conversations is also a normal part of our role, such as telling people things they don’t always want to hear.
However, on reflection, particularly post-covid, I’m happy to admit that I think I was wrong for a few reasons: We have a unique role in our organisations as we are professionally tasked with caring about the welfare of our employees and keeping them safe from harm so isn’t this just a natural extension? We also work across the whole business, working seamlessly from one department to another, in a collaborative way, so our sphere of influence is extensive. Having difficult conversations is also a normal part of our role, such as telling people things they don’t always want to hear.
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We also have the listening and observational skills to talk to people, understand where there is a problem and seek positive outcomes. In hindsight, perhaps we are the best people for this role. I’m not a psychologist, but equally, I don’t pretend to be an asbestos management consultant either. We don’t need to be technically competent in everything. It’s much more important to recognise when further expertise is needed. And when it comes to wellbeing it can begin simply by tasking managers to say: “How are you?” We can build stress management into our safety frameworks and learn how to spot the signs of someone who looks like they need to talk.
So now I truly believe wellbeing can be part of the role of the safety professional, someone who has the skill to look after our employees, to challenge and engage and find solutions – or, in an ideal world, maybe it should sit with all of us?
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Good work is good for you and bad work is bad for you and everyone knows eating well and exercising important … so I feel it falls on line management to create a learning based, engaging and empowering culture to directly address wellbeing at work at source … our role just to support that as in house consultants. Exactly as we know our role in excellent safety to be …
I agree Tim that wellbeing starts with good leadership /line management across any organisation
There will inevitably be varying or even polarised views on the rights and wrongs of this topic, and who should have overall responsibility for managing and supporting the wellbeing of our workforce. Sue makes a strong argument in para.3 and, to play Devil’s advocate, we could transpose “HR” for “we” in the wording and achieve the same outcome. There is no doubt that for some organisations this activity has traditionally sat within the remit of the HR team and for some it will continue to do so, while others have seen it as a part of the H&S portfolio, or do so now. I don’t believe that there is a right or wrong answer to this question.
The important focus is that the organisation acknowledges the importance of addressing and managing employee welfare and has a programme in place to support staff who need it, and that everyone – colleagues, managers, executives – understand the importance of spotting and supporting anyone who needs help. if they don’t have the specialist skills to step in then signposting is just as valuable.
Thank you for engaging Tim, and I agree it’s definitely more about the “What we do” than who does it.
Hi Sue. Thanks for opening this discussion. I’m curious to know how you define ‘wellbeing’. You seem to equate it with stress management… i.e. it is about preventing people becoming ill. This is possibly a narrow perspective when compared to (for example) the Farmer and Stevenson vision of enabling people to flourish at work. I agree with Tim’s point that this relies heavily on whether people are being managed and led in a positive way, allowing them to flourish, rather than just stopping them from burning out. While you don’t need to be a Psychologist, I think it’s really helpful to look beyond the H&S/HSE literature to inform, challenge and expand our perception of stress, wellbeing or other ‘human factors’.
Thank you Nick, I do see wellbeing as much wider than stress management which is why it made me nervous in the first instance to be honest . I think as health and safety professionals we sometimes focus more on the safety than employee “health” for example. I agree it’s important to keep learning, widening your horizons but also knowing when you need to call on other professionals . I really appreciate your feedback.
I agree with you, Sue. Ideally the health and well-being of employees should sit with both HR and Health and Safety. The two are connected. When not working as one, operational issues can delay matters.
Agreed Liz, I think that only when everyone is owning and committed to this will an organisation’s employees benefit.
“The last person I would want to consult in the workplace with mental or psychosocial health issues is HR or OH&S. There is no curriculum, experience, or expertise in safety to equip anyone to take on the complex task of counseling and engaging with people with mental health issues or in Pyschosocial health. It is simply fraudulent to think that Safety can do what professionals do in Pyschosocial health because they know how to talk to people.”
Hi Andrew. Thank you for reading the article .The premise of my argument was definitely to say that I’m not equipped to deal with for example, Psychosocial Health issues. I think we are talking about more general wellbeing and supporting a postive working environment but then calling on specialists, eg through Occupational Health schemes for example, as we would call on specialists for many safety related areas.
Thanks for this Sue. Wellbeing (starting with ‘stress’) became quite a divisive area in my own long service in public sector. This came to a head when SPs were being asked (by HR) to visit employees in their homes – that’s when I took a step back and re-evaluated roles. I concluded that H&S should be only peripherally involved, as it became obvious that we have little influence on implementing any change / controls (most stress then came from disagreements with line managers).
H&S are not the only ones to be “professionally tasked with caring about the welfare of our employees”. HR and OH do already deal with individuals on a confidential basis though. And that was the other big push away from welfare – H&S are not a particularly ‘confidential’ service. I felt uncomfortable in having very personal data on individuals, going beyond that which may come out of incident investigations.
So – I still maintain my own concern about wellbeing and H&S – over to HR unless it’s simple work related stress hazard id.
Thanks for commenting. I can see this has hit a nerve with many and opened up the debate which can only be good for all of us. It’s quite reassuring to hear I wasn’t alone with early reservations.