Orlando — “I am want to be clear, I am not in any way anti-technology,” says Doug Pontsler of the Center of Visual Expertise (COVE), speaking at a Tuesday afternoon education session at this year’s National Safety Council Congress & Expo. Pontsler’s session, “The Future of EHS,” emphasized the need for safety and health pros to focus on ever-advancing technology in the field, yes, and also value essential and never obsolete human competencies.

On the tech side of the equation, Pontsler says this includes massive inputs, actionable insights, solutions that reduce high-risk work, sensing physical and mental compromises, and mostly for training purposes, virtual reality and augmented reality.

Human competencies that will always be valued include understanding visual inputs, understanding meaning, critical thinking, communication, problem-solving and empathy and caring for others.

“Maybe we’ll have robots that can hug,” says Pontsler, “but I’m not so sure about empathy and caring.”

Companies heavily investing in technology also value today, says Pontlser. Perhaps more than ever they want individuals who possess curiosity, communication skills, critical thinking (the ability to collect information, define its meaning, and decide what action needs to be taken based on the assessment), problem-solving abilities, and can act as enablers. Pontsler defines enablers as those who have physiological safety insights and intelligence, gather a diversity of thoughts and emphasize inclusion, collect inputs to feed the decision process and commit to learning from other disciplines.

COVE specifically focuses its training services to use these competencies to build visual literacy skills. Originating in the art education field, visual literacy boils down to 1) what you see, observe and more closely inspect in detail; 2) describing what has been viewed; 3) analyze and interpret based on that description; 4) and then communicate what action(s) need to be taken based on that interpretation.

These visual literacy skills COVE applies to hazard recognition, incident analysis and risk management. Many hazards can be missed because most are silent (except broken machinery for example) and cannot be smelled (except for certain toxic chemical exposures or indoor air quality problems, for example), touched or certainly tasted. Seeing is how most hazards are uncovered and identified. And due to daily habits and routines, it is easy to walk past obvious hazards day after day without noticing them.

This is where human competencies and specifically visual literacy become critical to safeguarding= employees and workplaces. Yes, technology has vision capabilities – sensors, drones, cameras – but analyzing and interpreting what image inputs mean requires human thinking, contextualizing, assessing and problem-solving.

For more information about COVE: www.covectr.com