Lance Murray, RMPE

Relationships, relationships, relationships. Without them, you may as well be talking to the wall. Build them early on and realtionships will open many doors.

In the movie “Money Ball” there’s a great line that goes something like this. “The first one through the fence is always the bloodiest”. Sometimes we need to color outside the lines to see what we can create that may be very different from what everyone else thinks you should be doing. Don’t be afraid to try something so outside the realm of normalcy that everyone says you’re crazy. 30 years ago we were all preaching from the OSHA Regs. But today we know that even if we applied every standard in the 1910 or 1926 regs, we are still going to have injuries. Be imaginative. Be creative. Just because it has never been done, doesn’t mean it won’t work. Every organization is unique in its people, in its operations, in its culture.

As safety professionals we sometimes get lost in the goal of zero risk. Zero risk simply DOES NOT EXIST. Know your industry. Know the risks inherent with the industry and the individual workplace and minimize those risks to a level commensurate with the organizational culture. as your safety culture grows, so will the acceptance of the organizational culture of integrating safety into all aspects of the project. I work in construction. So every safety practice I implement to protect workers needs to be within the goal of building, remodeling and demoing buildings.

I agree with all 6 steps listed above. The reality is that as adults we make about 35,000 decisions a day. Every decision we make has an element of risk and safety integrated into it. Every adult is a risk manager as we manager risk all day every day. We all have a unique perception of risk - what is an acceptable level of risk and what is an unacceptable level of risk is dependent on our DNA, how we were raised, our parents, teachers, siblings, life experiences, etc. all have an influence on our perception of risk. Ultimately, I believe we learn from trial and error. In building a business we take risks and when something doesn't work, we find a way that it will work. Zero risk does not exist. but to succeed, we need to continually learn.

Safety is a people profession. While technical skills are a critical component of the safety profession, your ability to communicate, build relationships and actively care about the people you interact with and are there to serve, I believe, is equally important. Both technical skills and knowledge and your ability to productively interact with people will serve you well in this profession. An effective safety professional is sometimes a teacher, sometimes a counselor, a coach, occasionally a cop, sometimes a researcher, an investigator, an enforcer, an analyst, a listener and a host of other attributes. But ultimately, the safety professional needs to be a people person backed with the skills and knowledge to keep workers safe.

Stress your role as an integral part of the organization. Your (future) employer is in business to produce whatever it is that makes them a profit. Your role is to integrate into that culture and within the confines of the existing culture create change that benefits the organization. Your role should be to create an environment that is safe for employees AND is profitable for the company. Understand and communicate you will never create a zero-risk environment. A construction safety manager can create a fantastic safety program to prevent employee injuries, but unless it is conducive to building a building, it will never benefit the organization. Your responses to questions should always show benefit to the organization.