The Safety Guy In Corporate America

Saturday, May 20, 2006 | 0

By Andrew DePaolo

There is a problem with the employers of "safety experts". Most employers still don't view safety as a bottom-line money saver. They merely view it as a requirement to keep their insurance rates low and OSHA out of their factories and offices. The 70k salary some refer to in the safety industry is way above what employers, on average, are willing to pay their safety guy. It's not the knowledge base that is missing... it's the lack of desire to gain the educational "expertise" when the employers are not willing to pay for it.

There are tons of safety jobs out there, but a glance through any employment website reveals company's high work expectations, but offering salaries averaging much closer to 50K. Still not a bad salary, but the employers are searching for the undergraduate professional that sees that salary as great, at least at an early age. Graduate and doctorate professionals would, and do, demand greater salaries that companies are not willing to pay.

Companies seem only willing to pay these lower salaries to keep insurance rates low. The requirements are for companies to manage a couple very simple safety programs that anyone could do. What you'll find is that most companies view "safety policies" and laws as being complicated and difficult to understand. The simple thing to remember is that safety is one of the only professions that has laws and regulations that are mostly developed because of "blood". Someone got hurt or killed. In other words, most companies could get away with a program called "if it could hurt... don't do it"! Also, "if it might hurt... protect yourself"! Common sense stuff.

Once the educated influence of a calibered safety professional significantly impacts the bottom line of corporate spending, and the nation starts demanding fewer workers being injured on the jobsite, will current salaries continue to de-motivate educated professionals to seek advanced degrees. However there are a couple schools of thought:

First, a safety guy's, or a company's safety program performance is based on a negative. How many people did we hurt. How many fewer people did we hurt. What is hard to quantify is, did we prevent injuries from happening in the first place, or just reduce the quantity of injuries happening. To prevent the injury from happening you must first know what the injury is, or might be, its severity, and the probability of it happening. That is what we call a risk. It becomes a statistic. But if the injury never happens, there is no statistic to measure. Just the "LACK" of injury to measure against what statistically happened in the past. Employers and lawmakers don't see that a change is required unless there is a need. No injury... no need to change! Injury... NOW change! Has your mother ever said " don't throw that... you'll take someone's eye out"? She knows, based on statistics, that the probability is high that someone will lose an eye, or else she just likes saying that phrase. BUT, would she ever say "there exists the chance that something may be thrown in the future, so... a law or policy needs to be written requiring your little brother to wear some PPE, because I believe there exists an opportunity for him to get injured"? NO, That took too long to say, never less taking too long for a law to be written until someone gets hurt. Then, and only then, does it become a priority to enact a law. Why do you think the child helmet law in California was enacted. Blood! Car seats, blood! The educated safety professional would be able to point this out.

Second, we tend to revert back to our comfort zone. It's called complacency. We feel like superman... flying around, getting the bad guy, chasing Lois Lane and helping humanity. Even Superman knows about statistics. Statistically, "Kryptonite" is some baaaaad stuff. Anyway, we will only view what has statistically happened bad to us or someone we know, in the past, as being a potential or probability. But we will continue to act in any fashion that we believe "can not happen to us". We assume a risk. Superman never fears anything except what he knows hurts him... every time. But he doesn't know what's next until it comes at him. Problem is, we are not Superman. We can't handle a piece of flying shrapnel to the retina of our eye from a breaking drill bit. But we were sure it wasn't going to happen to us. So we did not wear our safety glasses and now have formed a "negative statistic". The employee says, "why do we have to wear these stupid things, they get in my way". Next time, explain to the employee about taking the risk of going home that night with one less eye, than he left with in the morning. Hopefully he'll get the picture. I personally use a bit more graphic and direct approaches when addressing the employees.

This whole thing starts from the top down. If the "big guy" is really safety and incident reduction motivated, but doesn't hammer his subordinate staff to really reduce incidents and injuries then the game is lost. The subordinate staff just wants to make money... making themselves and their boss look good, so goes the pre-OSHA motivation. "Joe's injured... bring in the replacement". Most employers still fail to see, and do anything about, the huge hidden costs involved with an injury. They just demand their subordinate staff to "sell" more, "build" more, "service" more to overcome their missed profit opportunity. My simple philosophy is "sell, build, service more and more and more... just do it safely.

Most people reject change especially when it comes to a safety practice because it slows them down at first. They need to understand more fully, that not changing, may slow them down... for good!

Andrew DePaolo has a Masters Degree in Aeronautical Science and Safety Systems. He is a Professor at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University teaching occupational, industrial and aviation safety doctrine. He also performs workplace risk management, evaluation and consulting services. He can be contacted at Andrew J. DePaolo, www.AJDePaolo.com, Cell (760) 936-5180, Fax (760) 888-0428, andrew@ajdepaolo.com.

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