What is the role of a safety professional? The identity, practice and future of the profession

Abstract

The role of a safety professional is central to the way organisations understand and manage safety since it is these expert roles that provide their organisations with their safety narrative. Yet despite the importance of this role, we understand very little about safety professional identity and safety professional practice – who are they and what do they do? This thesis asks the fundamental question for the existence of the safety profession – What is the role of a safety professional? The primary research design involved a 6-month longitudinal ethnographic case-study of professional identity and safety professional practice within a large Australian energy company. 12 mid-level and senior-level safety professionals were interviewed monthly regarding their work, and this data was supplemented by continuous work observations by an embedded researcher throughout the study period. Through the research design, the results of this study provide a deeper and broader perspective of safety professional practice, than the existing descriptive research into the role of safety professionals. Safety Professional identify is rife with tensions and contradictions that reveal the complex social and organisational challenges associated with the role. Safety Professionals are both friend and enemy of line management and the frontline workforce. Safety professionals through the practice of their role: align themselves and their work with management objectives, develop safety specific processes and practices, satisfy organisational needs at the expense of worker safety risk reduction, and lack a working connection between safety science knowledge and their safety professional work, decisions and advice. Contemporary safety theory describes new ways for achieving safety in organisations that are largely at odds with current organisational safety approaches and existing safety professional practice. This thesis provides the first practical description of the role of a safety professional thorough a resilience engineering, safety-II, and safety differently theoretical lens. The conclusion from this research, is that organisations expect safety professionals to perform their existing role, and that the contemporary safety science literature demands them to work vastly differently. This thesis makes a significant scientific contribution to the understanding of safety professional identity, safety professional practice, and the future design of the role of a safety professional which will narrow the gap between safety professional work and the safety of work.