These are my reflections on changing the safety industry after interviewing 59 practitioners. It is a draft–please do not quote.

During my first years as an organizational development (OD) consultant. I worked almost exclusively in the safety field with employees, supervisors and safety managers. In contrast my colleagues from graduate school worked in corporate OD functions, often with senior leaders. I was bored and wanted to leave safety because the safety function had no organizational psychology. So that references to OD concepts such as culture, teamwork and leadership development were very rare. In addition, the function had almost no status so it did not attract strategic thinkers or leaders. Consequently, any advances made were quickly forgotten in the wake of constantly changing management personnel.

Eventually, I was able to work outside of safety with organizations like the World Bank, Right Management, and Sandia Labs. I discovered that companies spend lots of money developing knowledge workers and leaders—money that is not available for safety personnel development. I also discovered the in spite of that money, it was rare that any kind of organizational improvement emerged. Improvement existed at the individual level causing me to develop a personal philosophy that if I was able to make a difference in one person’s life then the project was a success.

The context that drew me back into the safety field was my interest in complex responsive processes (CRP). Beginning in 1995 I wrote several articles applying OD concepts to the improvement of safety culture. There was very little reaction to my articles until 2010. Most likely the Macondo well explosion which closely followed the Texas refinery explosion caught executive attention. Dekker had written Drift into Failure and I applied complexity management theory to the incident. CRP is an aspect of complexity theory that explains the impact of human relationships on systems. This led me to begin writing about relationship-based safety. The goal was changing the safety industry to a people centric approach.

The notion of relationship building as a critical skill for OHS practitioners caught some interest, but I am not sure if it is not yet considered a must have tool or if practitioners believe they already know how to do it. While reading through the Provan 2018 study it seemed to conclude that too much of their time was taken by relationship building. That’s understandable given the inordinate amount of effort it takes for them to be seen and heard. As I began to post on LinkedIn about relationships as a key element of successful safety performance I met like-minded practitioners. I discovered that many of them were primarily motivated to care for and help people. My exposure to global OHS teams from around the world informs me that this dedication is consistent globally. This study also confirms that many OHS practitioners put people first.

That seems straight forward, but this is an occupation filled with conflicting identities and pressured by social forces that can strip away a member’s sense of self. The voices represented through this paper speak of caring for people and creating safer working environment. In contrast, prominent researchers in this space paint a picture of OHS professionals who do not see themselves as responsible for worker safety (Provan, Dekker, Rae, 2019).

They who do not see themselves as responsible for worker safety

Safety professionals see themselves as accountable to management for their role performance, and discharge this through their safety work. They do not see themselves as responsible for worker safety. Safety professionals perform the role of demonstrating safety on behalf of management through managing the message and preventing safety events disrupting the continuing operations of the organisation and management’s achievement of their production and profit goals (Provan, et.al., 2019:285).

Perhaps both scenarios are correct. Or is there something missing from both scenarios? Perhaps there is a different one entirely? The evidence shows the profession attracting people who care and want to help. It also points to a conflict in values once they enter the workforce. They want to protect people but the stakeholders (from management to board members) have demands that seem to conflict. This leads the professional to burnout, reassessing their career choice or looking for a new position.

Why are OHS practitioners outsiders?

There is a tradition where certain professions/ individuals concern themselves with the weak and vulnerable, rather than the rich and powerful. Mother Teresa, James Baldwin, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Dolores Huerta had other choices but chose to speak up for those who could not take that risk. One of my favorites is Thoreau.

I once had a sparrow alight on my shoulder for a moment while I was hoeing in a village garden, and I felt that I was more distinguished by that circumstance than I should have been by any epaulet I could have worn. – Thoreau

That reminds me of some of the safety practitioners I’ve known, the ones who see their place protecting people. It’s too bad they are mocked as trying to be heroes. Maybe the ones who do so have never struggled with the paralysis that comes from the fear of speaking up to authority. Many consider themselves above that fear, but all it shows is their denial or their ignorance of how the other half lives—or should I say 3/4 lives?

That is not to say that everyone who works in safety is bent towards speaking truth to power on a frequent basis. Most feel powerless on the topic of changing the safety industry. They feel they can’t push because they might lose what little they’ve gained. Like any social movement, there’s a few at the front of the change, and the majority waiting to see what happens. Then there are the few entrenched and keeping things as they are.

Making profit is more important than people no matter what the vision statement says. Any exceptions are centered around specific individuals who hold a different set of values. One CEO comes to mind, Paul O’Neill. Given this reality at this time safety is at a point where small steps are possible. It is timely that concepts like nudge and micro practices are popular. It is not a situation where you can plot a change management strategy. Forming alliances is the way to move one step forward. This is not typical for men to do this but it is possible that showing care and concern for supervisors and managers could fast track those alliances.

Being an outsider is part of the job

When OHS practitioners describe feeling unappreciated it is an outcome of the difference in social status between them and other groups, not just management, but sales or knowledge workers in the core business. If one is not a member of a social group it is hard to be heard by them. One of the reasons we don’t listen to members of another group is that we don’t think they understand the problem. OHS has a marginal role. They are peripheral experts. Some are able to accept it as part of the job, others feel disrespected. Those who feel harmed by this dynamic should consider leaving the profession or seeking coaching/therapy. The choices are acceptance, leave the situation or change yourself. Changing yourself does not mean abandoning your values. It means learning to control your emotional reactions, setting boundaries and knowing when you cannot bring value to a situation.

This is not the only occupation where advisors feel unheard. Lippitt and Lippitt (1975) devised a descriptive model for organizational development consultants to address this issue. The roles are advocate, technical specialist, trainer or educator, collaborator (in problem-solving), alternative identifier, fact finder, process specialist, and reflector. They noted that these roles are not mutually exclusive. None of them are associated with power, but each has a sphere of authority that can be developed.

It is difficult to work in a marginal capacity but it is important for the OHS adviser to be an outsider. It is commonly accepted that a consultant cannot consult to their own group because they will bring in all the same assumptions and beliefs. There could be little done in terms of changing the safety industry. It is understandable that this role could be a lonely one. It can also create self-doubt.

Becoming an insider helps to alleviate this loneliness and anxiety. Staying removed and distant can also relieve the anxiety. Doing either, however, lessens the effectiveness of a consultant significantly. One way to alleviate the problems of loneliness and anxiety is to co-consult. If you there is no one on the team to co-consult one can seek external networks and mentors.

Some professionals choose to be individual technical contributors to avoid some of the social conflict.

The technical side is very comfortable for many and less “messy”. It’s much easier to be clinical and knowledgeable with technical facts. Developing emotional intelligence is not so accessible to everyone and seems essential for relationship. Relationship is hard work. VP of EHS

Those who try to avoid this ambiguity by going into technical consulting are misguided because having one’s advice accepted requires building relationships. Most consultants would blame employees for a failed implementation of a new technology. They were so resistant! The truth is that we must first establish a relationship of trust and open communication.

Socio-psychological risks in OHS

The present status of OSH professionals blocks them from becoming part of the core business and selling their ideas to improve safety. As a result, they must spend an inordinate amount of time building relationships across power divides. Unfortunately that relationship building is mostly one way.

Those in power are often oblivious to the behind-the-scenes strategic and time-consuming tactics practitioners are forced to utilize. This time and energy may be well spent if it results in important protections for vulnerable employee groups. But imagine the increased performance if an equitable and inclusive relationship with decision makers were in place. It is entirely possible that this aspect of the job is a substantial contributor to burn out. All social interactions are risky but the level of risk rises when there is a possibility of rejection. Many times that rejection shows up as non-responsiveness. Yet if an incident takes place a practitioner can be blamed for not being influential enough to make management address the potential hazard.

Practitioners spend sleepless nights sometimes wondering if they will be fined for something the business failed to correct. It takes an inordinate amount of energy to keep offering ideas and recommendations for improvement in spite of the silence. If the practitioner does not take care of their mental health it is easy to feel diminished and lacking in value.

It is ironic that ISO 45003 introduced psychosocial hazards under the purview of safety management systems when OHS practitioners face so many personal psychosocial challenges on the job. Perhaps the assignment will provide an opportunity to bring up some of those challenges in the context of overall employee well-being. Thus, it bears examining if the OHS practitioners’ proximity and perceived relationships of caring with employees make them good candidates to notice early signs of fatigue and anxiety. If the answer is yes, they need to be educated in the appropriate disciplines and those new responsibilities must be clarified. Since management is ultimately responsible for these issues it lies in their purview to provide this clarity.

It is an individual decision to stay, leave or attempt to change the role

When people have their social needs met, there is less chance of burn out. If people, instead, have been dealing unsuccessfully with a deteriorating situation for a long time, it will inevitably lead to exhaustion. In those cases, as some advisers mentioned, it may be time to quit. A toxic environment is unhealthy.

The resistance and the ethic of caring

According to Carol Gilligan the ethic of caring is a moral position that gives importance to caring relationships, empathy, and compassion in decision-making. This comes through in OHS with concepts like the idealized concept of Just Culture (2011).

The ethic of caring is linked to the helping profession. Culturally it is linked primarily to women, but there are men who are also caring. The problem is that the morality of the ethic of care is embattled, especially in the U.S. It has been compared to a slave morality by those who want to keep a strict separation between what is expected of women as opposed to men. It has been cloaked in a warning that it promotes the oppression of women because it reaffirms subservient traits as virtues (Davion, 1993). Yet, when a man shows caring feelings they may be disdained for not being masculine enough.

It is difficult to accept this criticism in light of new evidence that as humans we are by nature empathic beings, hard-wired for relationship and collaboration. This paints a picture of people born with the capacity to care, and with emotional intelligence. Rather than wonder how we can teach people about caring and relationship we could be asking how do people come to lose the capacity for empathy and mutual caring?

In a patriarchal framework the ethic of caring is feminine and most businesses are patriarchal. In a democratic society where all people are considered equal caring is considered a human quality that makes it possible to create a society where everyone has a voice and is heard with respect. This is foundational to the issues we have been discussing around the status of OHS practitioners. Respecting the ethics of those who see themselves as caring opens the way for conflicts to be addressed and integrating their voices into the community of work. Those who feel inclined can take up the feminist ethics of care position, which sees its self as an ethic of resistance to injustices inherent in the patriarchal system.

Feminist ethic of care

A feminist ethic of care is an ethic of resistance to the injustices inherent in patriarchy (the association of care and caring with women rather than with humans, the feminization of care work, the rendering of care as subsidiary to justice—a matter of special obligations or interpersonal relationships). A feminist ethic of care guides the historic struggle to free democracy from patriarchy; it is the ethic of a democratic society, it transcends the gender binaries and hierarchies that structure patriarchal institutions and cultures. An ethics of care is key to human survival and also to the realization of a global society (Carol Gilligan, 2011b).

Some working in OHS might recoil at the idea, but it is a disadvantaged group when it comes to creating change in the workplace or helping workers. That is not to say that they are not productive or helping. It is that their contributions are curtailed and unrecognized. The question is how to improve the social position of the profession so that worker’s wellbeing improves. Taking a proactive approach to reshaping the OHS identity is a viable approach.

Social identity theory proposed the valuable distinction between individual and collective responses to social disadvantage (Tajfel & Turner, 1979). Individual actions can penetrate hierarchical relations that are permeable, just and fair. In such a case an individual practitioner might improve their individual position.

In contrast when the hierarchy is impenetrable and unresponsive, individual mobility is unlikely. The improvement of the profession’s social status and unleashing of its members full potential can only emerge through social change. Members of disadvantaged groups with a social change mindset must work to improve the status of their group through collective action (Leaper, 2011; Wright, 2001). Safety professional associations such as Safety Institute of Australia, National Safety Council, and American Society of Safety Engineers are potential vehicles for this work—that is not currently the case.

Having said that, per Dave Provan there are individual acts of dissent that practitioners can take depending on the answers to these questions:

If your purpose is to reduce risk for the frontline then stop doing the things that don’t meet that purpose.

What is your purpose?

Who is your customer? Is it management or the employee exposed to risk?

If the organization is the customer is their objective the reduction of risk?

According to Dave Provan (2022) sometimes you have to undermine the organization’s goals to reduce risk.

1. Question the JSAs and procedures. Are they based on how the work is done? Go observe the work.
2. Share information across silos and bring people together to resolve differences in perceptions about what is safe. The maintenance department may decide to inspect equipment every six months. When you go to engineering to inform them, you find out they are horrified because it should be done more often.
3. When a project goes overtime or over budget that is a leading indicator for potential risk. Call the operational manager and ask if they find that they have to skip over safety processes to get the job done on time or on budget. Don’t let them get away with telling you that they are not doing that. Help them out. See #4.
4. Ask operations managers—what’s happening? What are you worried about? The safety person can put their thumb on the scale for safety when ops can’t do it. The operational manager doesn’t always feel I can say no to their boss.
5. Ask yourself, “Why am I doing this?” If the answer is not to reduce risk for the frontline workforce, stop doing it.

The way forward to changing the safety industry

It is not always the case, but advisers spoke about their closeness to the employees and their desire to respond to their concerns. Are employers aware how much value this attribute brings to the organization? Showing concern for employees increases the willingness of employees to adopt company practices. When you support the passion and energy of people they experience success more easily than when you try to shape them into something they are not. In fact tampering with people’s values and sense of purpose leads to poor performance and talent attrition.

These fresh ideas about how to protect workers are resting on a foundation that was built to support the past: engineering, training and enforcement. That foundation will crumble as humans inevitably adapt and innovate. Rather than fear the loss of the venerable ideas that have improved safety in the workplace till now, this is an opportunity to find the tension between the old and the new and generate new levels of wellbeing. Protecting a weak foundation of outgrown ideas are no match for the power of human beings to bring it down.

Nevertheless there are forces pushing OHS to stay in the technical paradigm and focus on scientifically validated answers. Any mention of culture is fleeting and shallow. Science is seen as the way to raise the status of the OHS profession. Of course biological and behavioral science knowledge is necessary, but it is insufficient to address many of the challenges of organizational life. Most of them are about how people feel about the way they are treated. I never found science to be useful in the transformation of anyone’s identity or self-image. And I think if you look up the research on social identity, that element is fairly significant in determining how we experience life.

An early behaviorist wrote that there is no dividing line between man and brute (Watson, 1961). I don’t hear that these days, but I wonder if that is still the bottom line. Is that the reason for failing to address the reality that emotions and feelings impact organizational performance.

The way forward is to invest in the emotional health not only of OHS personnel but of all employees and managers.  The Gallup organization (Clifton, 2022) has consistently found that thriving workers create significantly lower absenteeism, turnover and accidents. Neuroscientists tell us that to reach these ends leaders will need to follow the road less travelled—embracing the role of emotions, feelings and relationships on people’s ability to perform (Rock, 2009;  Oshner & Lieberman, 2001). This includes learning not only about employee’s socio-psychological needs, but also what leaders need to perform well.

That this is the way forward is becoming clearer each day with an aging population needing more healthcare and the social upheaval of artificial intelligence creating an uncertain future for so many. Instead of outsourcing dangerous work to groups and countries without the resources to mitigate the risks, first world countries can invest in the professionals that find work satisfaction in preventing and reducing the dangers of work.

Business must evolve. Leaders who embrace the ethic of care, like women of color, have the potential to lead that transformation. We must begin by creating our own sense of identity and psychological safety. We need to stop the negative criticism of each other and embrace the valuable viewpoints and experiences that give us unique perspectives. We can build our collective power and use it to confront exclusion and create cultures where belonging is never conditional. Each of us and together we can make a profound impact within and outside our organizations while ensuring that our words are heard, and our contributions are finally valued.

References

Clifton, J. (2022). The worlds workplace is broken: here’s how to fix it. https://www.gallup.com/workplace/393395/world-workplace-broken-fix.aspx

Davion, V. (1993. The ethics of self corruption. Volume 24, Issue 3 p. 233-242 Journal of Social Philosophy.

Gilligan, C. (2011b). Ethics of care. https://ethicsofcare.org/carol-gilligan/#:~:text=An%20ethics%20of%20care%20directs,rather%20than%20deductive%20or%20mathematical.

Lippitt, R. and G. Lippitt. (1975). Consulting process in action. Training and development journal. 29 (five): 48–54; 29 (6): 38–44.

Ochsner, K. N., & Lieberman, M. D. (2001) The emergence of social cognitive neuroscience. American Psychologist, Volume 56, pp. 717–734.

Rock, D., (2009). Managing with the brain in mind. https://www.strategy-business.com/article/09306

Tajfel, H., Turner, J. C., Austin, W. G., & Worchel, S. (1979). An integrative theory of intergroup conflict. Organizational identity: A reader, 56-65.