Not exactly answering the posted question, but I don't really care what others think! I'm happy in my role, my employer is happy with the work I do so I try not to expend energy worrying what others might think of the profession, I'll leave that to the politicians etc.

Yes you get mixed reaction when talking to Joe Public, I just say I'm in risk management to which yI generally get a baffled expression and leave at that. If someone seems remotely interested then we can have a good discussion about business risk exposure and management covering many areas including OHS.

Is the Health and Safety Practitioner misunderstood by the public? Probably, but there are more important things in life to be concerned with.

When asked what I do I generally stress the 'at work' part of health and safety. This usually results in a more reasonable response. However, recently I had a negative response to that. I then challenged that person and asked him how happy he would be if he had to go to see the wife to tell her that her husband would not be coming home from work any more, or that her husband now had mesothelioma due to having worked for many years with asbestos. I then commented that my job is to see that this sort of thing doesn't happen. Result was "I hadn't thought of it in that way" response and a more positive view of what we do. Perhaps it is us who don't promote what we do actively enough, such as those who have indicated that they try not to say what they really do when asked. Perhaps if we were more assertive then the Daily Wail and others would give up and look for something else to go on about.

Chris

For what it’s worth and this may sound bitter but it is not intended to be so, just the way it plays out.

I got involved in H&S because I questioned some advice I was given a couple of years back. The advice came from a IOSH member. The advice was way off being correct. I thought I’d give it a go.

Getting my NEBOSH Occupational Cert with distinction and went on and took the construction cert, again with distinction.

On my so CPD plan I can give myself points (effectively marking my own exam paper) so I can move on with H&S. Not at all sure if this is the way to do things.

In my profession, electrical, we have to endure so many people giving out advice on Health and Safety that our ears are burn.

One particular area in which problems come to light is the field of Portable Appliance Testing (PAT). We, and the general public, read/hear advice on this subject and when digging deeper we find that the person dishing out the advice may well be qualified to NEBOSH and Members of IOSH etc but have no qualifications as an electrician or even close. The advice is, for the most part incorrect, misleading and, on times, dangerous.

This may come form people passing things like NEBOSH general certificate in occupation H&S and the construction etc then dishing out advice on electrical matters under the deluded thought that they are indeed competent to do so when they have no real idea what it is they are talking about.

e.g. Something that has just become known here the other day. People quote ‘High voltage’ quoting USA rules/guidance and using that terminology for voltage definitions in the UK. Totally confusing the issue. When in fact people in the UK cannot, for the most part, differentiate between inflammable and non-flammable

Low voltage, extra low voltage, reduced voltage; SELV and FELV all mean something. If in doubt just give the actual voltage. i.e. 12V dc or 230v ac. Please don’t go shouting ‘high voltage’ it sounds silly to the professionals.

When I show this web site to our apprentices – the electrical posts that I am qualified to answer - they cannot understand why they are asked to listen to ‘advisors’ and assessors who are not qualified to answer electrical questions.

They then ask ‘are all H&S people giving advice way out of their field of expertise’.

Unlike Jake, I do care what others think of H&S. I care with a burning passion, I wish I didn't. But we need to talk ablt what we are good at. Cement burns..builder with H&S and so on. Please, please girls and boys, chemicals I will keep out of...etc. Sorry for going on and on but I will do so until the point is made...ok mods..kicking off time again

In the oil industry, especially the North Sea, Health and Safety is now regarded as an essential part of the process.

If anyone outside of the industry has a negative opinion on what I do I point out tragedies such as the Piper Alpha or the Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill and say it's my job to help prevent anything like that from happening again.

...and yes, as Zimmy has pointed out. H&S professionals meddling in things they know nothing about gives us a bad name.

Can I share this "island" with you Claire? I despair at times at how this game is played out.

Forget the Daily Mail, Paxman and certain others - a lot of the nonsense is bred and farmed within the safety bod communities.

Jon

I tried - it does not work .....

Colin, Shetland

What do I do? I save lives.

Oh god not that old chestnut again!

We had a huge debate on that recently and I think most people accepted that in fact we do not 'save' lives as there is no way of knowing whether what we do actually does save lives. It may it may not.

A Doctor saves lives. A Paramedic saves lives. A health and safety practitioner does not save lives. If you need an ego boost go and retrain in the medical profession.

David, I can say without hesitation that the h&s industry is held in poor esteem by many people, particularly those who work in construction orientated industries. As has already been pointed out there is much negative publicity in the media, nevertheless people are not stupid and most realise that these stories often have no substance. In any case, when I discuss with people the pros and cons of h&s nobody ever mentions the silly stories but their own negative experiences.

So you might ask what is the problem? There are so many issues associated with the adverse reaction people in general have with h&s and it is difficult to know where to begin. However, a starter for ten...over zealous (bearing) clients who use their influence to impose all manner of OTT initiatives. Main contractors who do not have the stomach to stand up to these clients, but are all too willing to crucify sub-contractors for minor infringements. The insurance industry and accident claims companies for promoting the perception in society of a blame culture. The HSE for spending countless hours producing overly prescriptive and complex guidance without ever addressing some of the real problems in our industry. Finally, some of our own colleagues who cannot see the woods for the trees.

I think the profession can be negative in itself with poor advice and sometimes I read the IOSH forums and see arguments between what would appear to the public as H&S professionals.

If the public get confused how do they evaluate what they see? A good book I am reading (well good in my eyes) is Dan Carter's, Risk. This hits the point on why people see things in the light they do i.e. 'Gut feelings'.

Currently on the news is tragedies about kids drowning so no doubt people will think swimming of the sea is dangerous and why, because they have seen a news article the evidence is there and their gut feeling goes with that. If I said to someone risk assessment, safe working practice etc will save their life or reduce accidents, no emotional ties with most no response. So if people are pushing safety into a bad light whose opinion do they respect mine vs the newspaper, I would say more likely to believe the newspaper.

Safety gets hit from all angles and it is up to us as professionals to encourage and gain buy in by being positive, supporting and assisting. That includes being humble to say, I don't know the answer on that but I will find out.

How many people have used the IOSH advice number to gain a clearer picture? Communication in my experience is the key and the way H&S professionals can deal with people in helping them to understand and safety and work safely.

I think the quality of some professionals is not as good as it can be and maybe that was a drive of recruitment in the sector. I take a H&S team on next week in a new role heading up the H&S function of a company, my first task is to create trust in what I want and buy in by the employees into my vision. How, with hard work, passion, enthusiasm and commitment, not shying away from decisions or referring to the fact it is up to them to make an assessment. Ensuring my team understand what I expect and what I want to deliver as a function and that they are coached if required to ensure we all sing from the same hymn sheet.

A bit of a rant but my two pence worth :)

#11

Ah shucks - I thought I had a soul mate.

Jon

In answer to the question, it purely depends on the perspective. The general press will keep picking on it because it's an easy headline grabber, regardless of the potential beneficial effect it can have. When something goes wrong they're quick enough to ask 'Why didn't someone do something?', when a local council wants a blanket excuse for stopping something the headline wil be 'blah, blah, blah... gone mad'.
Good news and success very rarely pulls in the numbers that bad news or 'sticking it to the man' does. An often unfortunate fact of life.

In terms of practitioners themselves I'm lucky to have not met many that I'd consider to be a bad representation of the profession. Most are doing it for the right reasons and it shows, although sometimes this passion can be misinterpretted.

For the general workforce our role can be something of an enigma. I've recently been told by someone who's stepped into the profession that they often regarded the H&S advisor's post as an easy ride, a view that many others had also held to his knowledge. There's been something of a dawning realisation that the HSEA post is a demanding role, often because of managing the personalities and relationships within the organisation... and then taking into account the decision making process when there happens to be tricky issue.

Maybe that's the problem, people fear what they don't understand and they don't understand our place in the food chain.

There's a little swing bridge between the rest of the world and my village, and for 20 days in September it has to be raised so that anti-corrosion work can be carried out. Now, there is another route to everywhere else, but it's a 5 mile detour. Not a problem that, is it? Well, it is if you want to walk, cycle or (even) ride a horse into town. It happens that there are people in the village who do want to do these weird things, and I'm one of them. So I rang the council. They had, of course, not even considered the bizarre idea that there might be people who want to get about without burning fossil fuels, so our discussion got nowhere.

What's that got to do with this thread? Well, I suggested that maybe the council could arrange for a temporary ferry (there used to be one back in the day). You could feel rather than hear the sucking of breath through clenched teeth; 'Health and Safety wouldn't allow that' said the man from the Council. Now, once I'd pointed out what I do and what I am he swiftly dropped that line of argument, but there, in a nutshell, was at least 75% of why we have a bad name. Council (or other) functionary caught out being thoughtless and lazy immediately jumps to H&S to justify an incomplete decision, or, in this case, an incomplete decision and a blank refusal to spend money.

There are some poor professionals about, I've interviewed a few in my time, but most of the ones I've worked with have been thoughtful and practical people, with probably more humility and compassion than the average Daily Wail journo,

John

Well said David. Me and my team work in services that supports people with complex disabilities and at end of life. We save lives, we really do. We do it in conjunction with other people, most notably our Clinical Quality team, but it's because of us that we manage things like bed-rails, hoists, slings and oxygen concentrators properly. I know we save lives, because before we developed and implemented our life-saving systems, we killed somebody. We got prosecuted for that, and believe me, it won't happen again,

John

Exactly. You could argue that the lollipop lady saves lives. Bet she doesn't start off a conversation about her job like that though. Somthing about this profession that peopel seem to justify their own existence by saying they 'save lives'.

I MAY have HELPED to prevent an accident that MAY have caused either an injury or death. Having been an inspector and issued prohibition notices on items that were considered to be dangerous that is especially the case. BUT that is not saving a life. Not like a doctor or a fireman etc. They actually , physically, save lives.

Ergo we also fail to save lives.

As long as we have helped to save SOME, that's as much as we can do. There will always be some who cut corners and take chances like the lone worker in a cherry picker without a harness in a previous thread.

My approach has always been to quote some crude statistics and ask a simple question. In the '60s 2000 people died at work each year, nowadays it less than 200. Part of that improvement is down to improvements in H&S at work. Is that a bad thing?

and I feel epic Clairel :-)

Clairel if you came up with answers like this working where I do you would have every reason to hate your job. Given your reponse I suspect your measure of "good" H&S is LTIR, RIR, AFR etc.

Have you ever considered the word prevention?

"We had a huge debate on that recently and I think most people accepted that in fact we do not 'save' lives as there is no way of knowing whether what we do actually does save lives. It may it may not.

A Doctor saves lives. A Paramedic saves lives. A health and safety practitioner does not save lives. If you need an ego boost go and retrain in the medical profession."

Do you believe the person who invented the seat belt has saved lives or is it just the medics who treat people not wearing them in a crash that save lives. Just a thought.