Less than 2% of worksites have a full-time EHS manager on site. This estimate comes from Bureau of Labor Statistics figures showing 5.6 million worksites in the U.S. and only 100,000 EHS managers.

Most EHS pros work in mid-size to large operations with more than 100 employees. Thousands work as consultants. This leaves a vast gap in professional EHS coverage. The majority of U.S. manufacturing sites are small; more than 93% have fewer than 100 employees and nearly 75% have less than 20 employees.

Most construction firms are also small businesses. BLS estimates indicate around 80% of construction companies have fewer than 10 employees.

From these stats emerges the importance of “The Safety Guy.” The term has been used for more than a century and certainly includes many women. Another description for this role is “Additional Duty Safety Officer.” These are the part-timers responsible for a site’s safety and health efforts (in many small operations practices aren’t formalized enough to be called programs). Their primary occupations can be found in all corners of a workplace – company owner, president, attorney, plant engineer, maintenance engineer, human resource manager, facility manager, purchasing manager, production supervisor, quality control manager, operations manager, team leader, shift leader, department leader, volunteers and appointees.

“The Safety Guy” (male or female) is a worksite’s defense against injuries or worse and ensuring compliance with regs. The responsibility is not always handled well due to a lack of training, time, and resources; lack of personal dedication; lack of leadership backing; and pushback from employees. Many of these obstacles constrain full-time, committed EHS pros as well. One retired pro says, “Nothing gets me riled up as much as when I think back on the crap I had to put up with from those who saw “the Safety Guy” as being the Safety Mama, the Safety Cop and always the Safety Go-fer.”

More than a label

At many small work sites, “the Safety Guy” is the only person monitoring PPE use; urging compliance with regs; handling all related reports, forms and recordkeeping; doing any kind of training; trying to engage workers and maintain rules; arrange signage; and issue cautions, tips, reminders and attaboys. If the responsibility is taken seriously, it can be exhausting as an add-on to full-time duties. Whether or not it’s taken responsibly is often a matter of culture. From top leadership on down safety and health can be a value that is resourced and reinforced or seen as only adding cost, an interference or something that can be ignored – a small company flying under the regulatory radar.

Respect not ridicule

When Additional Duty Safety Officers perform their part-time job well, the broad skill set required deserves respect:

• Emphasize guiding and coaching, not policing, when focusing on rules and discipline
• Empathize and connect with workers, understand their jobs and challenges to give relevant advice and avoid appearing out-of-touch
• Use storytelling, relatable narratives and anecdotes, ask questions and listen instead of using fear tactics (gory photos, stats, OSHA violation news stories) or comic cartoons that undermine credibility
• Focus on being an influencer, not an enforcer
• Avoid being a pushover or a zealot, balance correcting at-risk behaviors with positive reinforcement for safe behaviors, avoid leaning too much on negatives
• Avoid lectures, jargon and being the safety know-it-all
• Spend time on the floor to understand how work really gets done, where the next incident might occur, and why
• Build relationships on the floor by knowing names, asking how it’s going, listening to concerns, and offering counsel
• Sell safety and health to management by showing the ROI in terms of less downtime, increased productivity and quality, better morale and more workforce buy-in
• Analyze all safety and health responsibilities to determine what’s essential and what there is not time for; how often tasks must be done; what tasks can be off-loaded to someone else; and leverage safety committees, safety champions, interested volunteers as allies and resources (advice courtesy of The Safety Geek – Brye Sargent, CSP).

These are skills needed for superior safety and health performance in a workplace of any size. In the absence of dedicated, full-time EHS professionals on site, “the Safety Guy” or “Safety Mama” who possesses these skills are invaluable, if too often not appreciated. Given the millions of workplaces without an EHS professional presence, these unsung part-timers contribute greatly to safety and health performance in the country.