“My manager doesn’t understand me” – could be the safety profession’s oldest lament
I quite often hear the lament from the safety fraternity that "my manager doesn't understand me ..." To this I reply - when one understands the myriad of demands placed upon C-level personnel, why should it be incumbent upon them to "learn the language of safety (environment, labour laws, accounting, IP, IT, etc). Rather, if safety pros are so keen to have their voices heard, the responsibility should be on them to learn the language of management, and place their commentary in the management context.
In my experience the safety profession cannot come to agreement with the terms it uses. I have commented on the insanity of using the term "incident" as a euphemism for "accident" which seems to be the preferred position of the safety profession (although, pleasingly, this seems to be changing, albeit slowly).