A business executive once told me that safety is a “necessary evil.” When I asked him to elaborate, it became clear that his view of OSH had been distorted by expensive projects and equipment upgrades at his company, all driven by regulatory compliance concerns. He was skeptical as to whether these compliance improvements would actually improve his organization’s safety performance. While I was able to turn the conversation around and speak to the proven benefits of having a sound safety strategy with a disciplined approach to operational excellence, it left me with the realization that we still have a lot of work to do in promoting the value of our profession.
Dr. Robert Eccles, a professor of management practice at Harvard, had this to say at ASSE’s sustainability symposium last year: “The safety profession has a marketing problem. It needs to get more shrill, more aggressive.” Eccles also said that our profession is competing for “mind share” with other factors driving corporate sustainability initiatives, including global concerns with water resources, child labor and pollution.