Safety Professional Research Articles

Understanding the ‘blues of safety professionals’

Something is not right in the safety profession. Many books written by professionals in the 2010s express a strong discontent. These professionals are highly critical of their situation, practice, role and identity. In these books, they express what this article describes as the ‘blues of safety professionals’. Although varying in writing style, tone, theoretical inspiration, emphasis and experience, they address similar issues which relate to practices corresponding, in their eyes, to outmoded, inadequate or even perverse ideas. The aim of this article is to introduce, summarize, explain and problematize the significance of this literature. Following a methodological section, the ‘safety professional blues’ is introduced. It is argued in another section that the ‘blues’ pinpoints what these authors consider to be flawed assumptions about many of the core ingredients of the safety profession. The roots of this discontent are the topic of another section, while a final section problematizes the ‘blues’.

Interconnected pathways: The role of integrated programs, safety climate, and safety professional engagement in safety and other organizational outcomes

Background: This study evaluated interconnected pathways of the use of safety management systems (SMS), environmental management systems (EMS), Lean, participatory programs, and integrated systems and their effect on safety management and other organizational outcomes from the perspective of safety professionals working within complex work systems. Method: Data were collected from 136 safety professionals. A structural path analysis assessed direct and indirect effects within the model and a confirmatory factor analysis evaluated high impact risk management practices and safety incidents as a model to assess safety management outcomes. Results: SMS implementation had significant direct effects on safety climate and high impact risk management practices. EMS implementation had significant direct effects on environmental management outcomes. Integration of SMS and EMS with Lean had significant direct effects on safety climate and safety professional engagement. Participatory programs had significant direct effects on high impact risk management practices and safety incidents. Safety professional engagement and safety climate had significant mediating effects on safety and organizational outcomes as did the use of high impact risk management practices. Conclusion: Results of this study present a case for the use of high impact risk management practices and safety incidents as a measurement of safety management outcomes and the use of participatory programs, SMS, and integrated systems, driven by highly engaged individuals to influence safety and organizational outcomes.

A framework for using data and collaboration to drive prevention through engineering design: Reducing injury and severity in greenhouse and nursery workers

Introduction: A framework of collaboration between safety professionals and design engineers was proposed that provided direction for utilizing analysis of quantitative and qualitative data to prevent worker injury. This interdisciplinary, context-steeped approach can be utilized across a variety of industries to promote risk reduction by designing equipment and processes to prevent common workplace injuries in the first place. Safety professional expertise in regional worker’s compensation claims analysis (including statistical analysis on a quantitative basis and qualitative analysis of trends in written injury descriptions of circumstance) provided the starting point for identifying industries of interest for this approach. Method: Followed by education of design engineers on safety approaches (including hazard identification, the ANSI/ASSP Z590.3 consensus-based standard), tools such as risk assessment matrices and methods for effective on-site work observation and interviews with workers affords transfer of knowledge. Design engineers then utilize safety influenced design problem identification and goal criteria to create and select concepts for eventual detail design and prototype testing on-site. This approach was implemented in a case-study at a Midwest greenhouse industry facility site in summer of 2019. Two problem areas were identified and addressed with two unique engineering designs that were prototyped and utilized at the facility with success. Practical Application: This approach can apply to other industries and collaborative teams in the future to prevent worker injury by design.

CANDOR - A Patient Safety, Medical Liability, and Healthcare Professional Wellness Program

The Communication and Optimal Resolution (CANDOR) program, a patient safety, medicolegal, and healthcare professional wellness program, has been implemented or in the process of being implemented in over 800 US hospitals. The program was designed to help patients suffering from unexpected adverse outcomes and healthcare professionals whose patients experience injury while under their care. The CANDOR program’s basic premise emphasizes honesty in medical error situations. It aims to prevent the recurrence of medical errors. Studies have found that, compared to the common US practice known as “Deny, Delay, and Defend,” using CANDOR not only benefits current and future patients but can improve the well-being of healthcare professionals. This paper therefore aimed to describe CANDOR and evidence regarding its effects on patients and the healthcare professional’s well-being at hospitals that implemented it in comparison to their previous practice of “Deny, Delay, and Defend.” This paper describes methods used by CANDOR teams, which include physicians, attorneys, patient advocates, and health policy leaders, in their successful endeavor to persuade hospital leaders to implement it, in essence to change the hospital’s culture from a culture of opaqueness regarding medical errors and their consequences to a culture embracing transparency. This paper also describes obstacles the teams faced in their endeavor to implement CANDOR at their institution and how they surmounted the obstacles.

Recommendations to improve ski area safety with obstacle padding

ObjectiveFixed obstacles, such as trees, rocks and posts, are common within recreational ski areas. Collisions with fixed obstacles (CWO) can have severe consequences with significant physical, emotional and economic costs. Despite worldwide use of ski area padding, few studies have focused on padding and CWO. The snowsports safety community is now focusing on this topic to improve safety at recreational ski areas. The objectives of this white paper are to summarize the recent work conducted on ski area padding, to identify unsolved questions about CWOs and opportunities to improve safety. MethodsA review of the current knowledge regarding CWOs and ski area padding was performed, combining scientific studies and experience from the authors and ski area safety professionals. This review covers: (i) the epidemiology of CWOs; (ii) the characteristics of CWOs; (iii) padding type and use; (iv) ski area safety professional practices; and, (v) padding performance and the limits for injury mitigation. ResultsPrevious studies focused on epidemiology, padding practices and performance and provide motivation for further study in the areas of: (i) prevention of CWOs; (ii) padding practices to improve safety on the slopes; (iii) requirements for padding performance; and, (iv) technological advancement of padding materials and design. ConclusionsThere is a need for an international standard for ski area padding, to address the absence of padding performance requirements in most countries. Further research studies should also focus on providing guidance to ski areas on the best practices for choosing, applying, and maintaining ski area padding.

Direct-reading instruments for aerosols: A review for occupational health and safety professionals part 2: Applications

Direct reading instruments (DRIs) for aerosols have been used in industrial hygiene practice for many years, but their potential has not been fully realized by many occupational health and safety professionals. Although some DRIs quantify other metrics, this article will primarily focus on DRIs that measure aerosol number, size, or mass. This review addresses three applications of aerosol DRIs that occupational health and safety professionals can use to discern, characterize, and document exposure conditions and resolve aerosol-related problems in the workplace. The most common application of aerosol DRIs is the evaluation of engineering controls. Examples are provided for many types of workplaces and situations including construction, agriculture, mining, conventional manufacturing, advanced manufacturing (nanoparticle technology and additive manufacturing), and non-industrial sites. Aerosol DRIs can help identify the effectiveness of existing controls and, as needed, develop new strategies to reduce potential aerosol exposures. Aerosol concentration mapping (ACM) using DRI data can focus attention on emission sources in the workplace spatially illustrate the effectiveness of controls and constructively convey concerns to management and workers. Examples and good practices of ACM are included. Video Exposure Monitoring (VEM) is another useful technique in which video photography is synced with the concentration output of an aerosol DRI. This combination allows the occupational health and safety professional to see what tasks, environmental situations, and/or worker actions contribute to aerosol concentration and potential exposure. VEM can help identify factors responsible for temporal variations in concentration. VEM can assist with training, engage workers, convince managers about necessary remedial actions, and provide for continuous improvement of the workplace environment. Although using DRIs for control evaluation, ACM and VEM can be time-consuming, the resulting information can provide useful data to prompt needed action by employers and employees. Other barriers to adoption include privacy and security issues in some worksites. This review seeks to provide information so occupational health and safety professionals can better understand and effectively use these powerful applications of aerosol DRIs.

Direct-reading instruments for aerosols: A review for occupational health and safety professionals part 1: Instruments and good practices

With advances in technology, there are an increasing number of direct-reading instruments available to occupational health and safety professionals to evaluate occupational aerosol exposures. Despite the wide array of direct-reading instruments available to professionals, the adoption of direct-reading technology to monitor workplace exposures has been limited, partly due to a lack of knowledge on how the instruments operate, how to select an appropriate instrument, and challenges in data analysis techniques. This paper presents a review of direct-reading aerosol instruments available to occupational health and safety professionals, describes the principles of operation, guides instrument selection based on the workplace and exposure, and discusses data analysis techniques to overcome these barriers to adoption. This paper does not cover all direct-reading instruments for aerosols but only those that an occupational health and safety professional could use in a workplace to evaluate exposures. Therefore, this paper focuses on instruments that have the most potential for workplace use due to their robustness, past workplace use, and price with regard to return on investment. The instruments covered in this paper include those that measure aerosol number concentration, mass concentration, and aerosol size distributions.

A qualitative survey of factors shaping the role of a safety professional

Provan et al (2017) conducted a systematic literature review in Safety Science that included more than 100 publications of the last 30 years published on the role of the safety professional. This comprehensive review identified 25 factors that shape and influence the role of the safety professional. These factors are organized in three categories: institutional, relational, and individual. The review highlighted a dearth of empirical research into the practice and role of the safety professionals. This article presents the results of a project combining two objectives: (1) conduct empirical research into the practice and role of the safety professionals; (2) support the reflection by safety students about their future role in organizations and the factors that will influence that role. The main contribution of this paper consists in delivering empirical data from a research setup that helped students to understand more clearly their role as (future) safety professionals. This is achieved through getting the students themselves engage with Provan's work and do interviews with practicing safety professionals using Provan's categories as inspiration for interview questions and discussion topics. The blending of Provan’s categories of factors with a role theory was used as a general analysis frame. This work presents several findings: (1) the factors identified by Provan et al. (2017) can be associated to a theoretical model of factors involved in the taking of organizational roles by the safety professionals. (2) We can also identify those 25 factors in real professional contexts, these factors are pertinent and relevant for safety professionals. (3) The 25 factors are not independent, some of them are reciprocal related and some of them have dependencies. Those relationships can give light on how roles of safety professionals are socially constructed. Reflection on those factors is very useful for future safety professionals (the students), this appeared to be an effective pedagogic process that enhance the processes of professional socialization of future safety professionals (Foussard et al., 2021). However, this last point will not be discussed in this paper.

Reduction of creating unsafe condition and safety device inoperative by introducing new system

The present work deals with the detailed analysis of various unsafe acts by the workforce, which gives the major impact on unsafe conditions of the workspace, which further results in different range of injuries and accidents in the manufacturing industry. The current scenario of the industry is initiated with various safety precautions implemented by our safety professionals. As a result, the number of injuries are reduced in a very meager amount, but the goal of making it down to zero cannot be achieved. In order to achieve the goal of a safety professional, this study presents clear observation by answering the questions why, when where and how loop-holes are created for the happening of unsafe acts. The study specially aims at controlling specific unsafe acts of workers by the elimination of procedural working condition while handling the machineries on various situations, predominantly during maintenance. This analysis gives us clear-cut picture on unsafe acts of the work force during maintenance is directly proportional to the unsafe conditions of work space.

A case study on the Industrial Risk Management (IRM) post-master academic education program of MINES Paris PSL University

This paper presents the results of an academic safety education program case study. Since 2004, more than 300 students have graduated from the MINES Paris PSL University Industrial Risk Management (IRM) post-master program. The program addresses Occupational Health and Safety and Industrial Safety topics. Students are recruited from a large panel of Master Programs, going from Safety, Health, and Quality to Environmental Studies. Students then follow a 500-hour program, and they do a 1000-hour internship. Most of the students find a job related to one of those two domains.The general idea behind this case study is to reflect on the relation between a safety education program and the safety professional (alumni of the program): how a student turns out to become a safety professional, how the safety professional looks back to his education in regard of his current professional situation in the safety domain. The results of this case study have direct implications for the organisation of the IRM program and academic safety education programs in general. In this paper we will focus on the alumni of the IRM program: What are they? What are they doing? What is expected of them? To what extent did their training and education influence them? What is the fundamental knowledge they think need to master when taking up a job? What kind of knowledge and competencies do they use, and do they need in their job?This case study was based on several methodologies. More than a hundred alumni participated to a survey in 2017. A focus group with several alumni was organized in 2018. A “before” and “after” graduation survey was done. A fundamental knowledge assessment was done in 2019 on one cohort of students and their feedback on this test was collected. A critical reflection about learning in the safety field and quality analysis of safety education programs is made and perspectives about future curricula are proposed. Finally, the results of those studies enable us to re-engineer academic safety professional education programs. Further perspectives deal with the role of safety professionals in their organisations and with a reflexion on their contributions to safety.

Perceived organizational support and perceived safety climate from the perspective of safety professionals: Testing reciprocal causality using a cross-lagged panel design

Introduction: The objective of this study was to determine the reciprocal relationship between safety professionals perceived organizational support (POS) and perceived safety climate. Safety professionals are most effective when they perceive support from management and employees and they also attribute most of their success to support from the organization. Their work directly improves safety climate, and organizations with a high safety climate show a higher value for the safety professional. The causal direction of this relationship is, however, unclear. Method: Using a sample of 162 safety professionals, we conducted a cross-lagged panel study over one year to examine whether safety professionals’ POS improves their perceived safety climate and/or whether safety climate also increases POS over time. Data were collected at two points and, after testing for measurement invariance, a cross-lagged SEM was conducted to analyze the reciprocal relationship. Results: Our findings show that safety professionals’ POS was positively related to perceived safety climate over time. Perceived safety climate, however, did not contribute to safety professionals’ POS. Conclusions: This study significantly adds to the discussion about the factors influencing safety professionals’ successful inclusion in organizations, enabling them to perform their work and, thus, improve occupational safety. Practical Applications: Since safety climate increases in organizations in which safety professionals feel supported, this study points out the kind of support that contributes to improved organizational safety. Support for safety professionals may come in classical forms such as approval, pay, job enrichment, and information on or influence over organizational policies.

Building trust in food safety certification

Building trust in food safety certification

Process safety – learning the hard way

Did you hear about the leak at the gas plant last week in Tasmania? What about the high potential incident from the dropped object at the chemical plant in Queensland? What about the fuel depot that went up in flames in Victoria? And what about the tragic scaffolding accident in New South Wales? What do you mean you don’t have time and that you have a meeting to go to….? Learnings are everywhere, as is the pressure of business and operational expectations to have continued sharing of lessons learnt. When do you have the time, let alone your teams and operations have the time, to appreciate the lessons? We do many great things to manage hazards and solve others’ problems, yet how can we ensure that the lessons are actually being learnt? This paper shares the 25 years’ experience from a Process Safety Professional, highlighting learning successes and failures from operations and projects executed around the world as well as from direct teaching experiences concering the fundamentals of process safety. It touches on the responsibilities we all have as process safety professionals and what we can do to enhance learning opportunities for both engineering and non-engineering audiences alike.

A roadmap to professionalism: Advancing occupational safety and health practice as a profession in the United States

Like many disciplines, modern occupational, safety, and health (OSH) in the US is the result of years of professional maturation by three main drivers: practitioners/best practices, professional associations (i.e., certifications, education standards, etc.) and a series of external events (law, policy, accidents, etc.) i.e., that continue to influence the collective development of the profession. This paper reviews each driver and its contribution to the evolution of OSH in the US. In the US, what is recognized as the OSH profession was originally a sub-discipline in the engineering field. However, defining the scope and function of OSH, laying the foundation for OSH as a unique discipline did not begin until the early 1960’s when the ASSP launched the Professionalism Project. It took several years for higher education to eventually create academic degree programs in OSH that focused on developing a capable and adequate workforce. Till that time, the discipline had been unregulated (i.e., anyone could claim to be a safety professional, with or without an education and with or without a professional credential) and unstructured (i.e., it was impossible to identify standardized approaches to identify and mitigate workplace life and health risks). Education standards for degree programs and professional standards for practitioners were significant responses to the lack of structure. For example, ABET accreditation and the creation of the Board of Certified Safety Professionals (BCSP) and its CSP credential became the first bona fide metrics against which to determine professional competence. The paper culminates with a roadmap for OSH to follow to achieve occupation closure as an ultimate expression of professionalization.

Defining ALARP for fire safety engineering design via the Life Quality Index

Fire safety engineering designs should comply with the ALARP requirement, meaning that fire safety measures should be implemented to ensure that fire risks are As Low As Reasonably Practicable (ALARP). However, previous approaches have often been contradictory or unclear, especially with respect to the concepts of risk aversion, the valuation of risk to life, the concept of disproportionality, and the need to take into account monetary benefits resulting from life safety investments. First, the As Low As Reasonably Practicable (ALARP) criterion is specified to a societal, risk-neutral, and scalar cost-benefit analysis in the field of fire safety engineering. This is done to overcome the shortcomings in current practice with respect to utilizing the ALARP criterion for Probabilistic Risk Assessment (PRA).Second, the ethical dilemma of the valuation of risk to human lives is addressed by application of the Life Quality Index (LQI), as has been suggested in the field of structural engineering through the recent ISO 2394:2015 standard. Contrary to the existing literature, the proposed interpretation for the ALARP requirement corresponds to an application of the LQI maximum societal benefit criterion. This ensures that safety resources are allocated so as to maximize the number of lives saved, and implies that the ALARP criterion results in stronger minimum requirements for life safety investments, i.e. societal lower bound investment levels.Third, the valuation of costs and benefits by the fire safety engineer is addressed by emphasizing the duty of care, and by specifying a benchmark criterion for the objective, diligent, and competent fire safety professional. This reinforces self-reflection amongst fire safety professionals, and diminishes the need for often unjustified or poorly specified disproportionality factors.Finally, the relationship between fire safety design and private actor cost-optimization considerations is discussed, and the presented concepts are illustrated using three examples. These clarify the application of the presented concepts and demonstrate how the societal ALARP requirement interacts with the (safety) preferences of private investors. The examples highlight the importance of the societal ALARP evaluation and show that this governs the safety investment when the private investor values damages low, applies a high discount rate, or takes into account indirect costs (e.g. aesthetic costs) related to the safety investment.

Development of a global framework for OHS professional practice

There have long been discussions on the professionality of occupational health and safety (OHS) and concerns about standards of practice, with the recognition of OHS as a profession further inhibited by lack of clarity on role and variations in terminology and principles underpinning practice. In 2013, the International Network of Safety and Health Practitioner Organisations (INSHPO) recognized the need for a global approach to reconceptualise OHS professionals as influential leaders who can work to integrate OHS within business processes. The Occupational Health and Safety Professional Capability Framework: A Global Framework for Practice was subsequently developed by this international body representing OHS professional associations across 10 countries with the outcome endorsed by 53 organisations at a ceremonial signing of the Singapore Accord. This paper reviews the development of the framework and the emergence of two clear roles; the OHS Professional and OHS Practitioner. It explores the process for clarifying the roles and required knowledge and skills together with the challenges experienced along the way. The paper recognises that the framework should not be a static document and so concludes by considering the work still to be done.

Predicting and preventing heat stress related excessive exposures and injuries: A field-friendly tool for the safety professional

While safety professionals are always mindful of heat stress when working in hot environments or while wearing chemical protective clothing, predicting working limits in those environments can be elusive. The authors have developed an Excel tool to help safety professionals stay within the American Conference of Governmental Industrial Hygienists (ACGIH) Threshold Limit Value (TLV) or Action Level for heat stress. The tool is most helpful in daily work planning where heat stress may be an issue.

An ethnography of the safety professional’s dilemma: Safety work or the safety of work?

The safety profession has grown and evolved over recent decades, and despite the prominence of the role within organisations, there is limited research about the current state of safety professional practice. The objective of a safety professional’s role is often stated as ‘preventing incidents and harm to people', although the existing research fails to demonstrate a compelling link between safety professional practice and worker safety. More recently, a model of safety work in organisations proposed that safety activities fulfill broader social and political needs, in addition to the physical reduction of safety risk. In this paper, we report a study that investigated the underlying objectives of individual safety professional tasks, then performed thematic analysis to explore the contemporary role of safety professionals in organisations. 12 mid-level and senior-level safety professionals were interviewed at monthly intervals for six months regarding their work activities, in addition to an embedded researcher performing more than 240 h of field observations. Four categories of safety work in organisations – demonstrated, social, administrative, and physical – were used as priori themes to deductively analyze the data. The findings demonstrate strength of alignment between the safety professional role and line management, the increasing institutionalization of safety professional work, an absence of safety professional work directed at reducing safety risks to workers, and the lack of a clear connection between safety professional practice and safety science research.

A short history of the role and status of the safety professional in Romania

This paper is written by a practicing safety specialist in Romania. So far as can be ascertained by the author there is no research done in Romania into the role that such a specialist and aspiring professional fulfils, and the author has no possibility of funding such research herself. Therefore, the paper is based only on an analysis of legal requirements for the role and education/training of such practitioners. These are filled out with personal observations and questions arising out of the author’s own work as a safety professionals and consultant over a period of 30 years It is offered to the special issue in that limited form as a personal view of the limited effect of reliance only on legislation as a support for the development of a professional preventive function in occupational health and safety (OHS).In Romania, being a health and safety practitioner requires formal qualifications (education, training and experience) established by government regulations. These have changed significantly even over the relatively short time since they were first established, indicating that they lack the firm basis in research and debate that could anchor them more firmly in practice. Such legally required qualifications are only one aspect in establishing a recognized OHS profession. There needs to be a supporting perception by the OHS practitioners themselves, their employers, government and the work community that they have a valuable and ethically underpinned contribution to make to danger prevention and protection. What is needed in Romania is research into the question whether those working in those jobs and their clients/employers see the possession of those jobs and qualifications as stepping stones to a profession, or simply as a way of making money.

Quality and safety management practices: The theory of quality management approach

Introduction: Safety management is frequently treated as non-essential and incidental to core business functions. Accordingly, the importance of safety management is often underestimated. The Theory of Quality Management was investigated in this study to find the degree of linkage between the management of quality and safety. Method: Data derived from a 40-item online survey were used to test the Theory of Quality Management model factors among quality and safety professionals. The surveys were distributed to quality and safety professionals represented by the American Society for Quality (ASQ) and American Society of Safety Engineers (ASSE), for a total of 144 completed surveys, with the largest number coming from manufacturing organizations. Results: the findings suggest good internal consistency for the variables and good correlations between the quality and safety professional responses. Conclusions: This study offers evidence that the organizational functions of safety and quality can follow the same management model, broadening the understanding of the Theory of Quality Management from focusing only the management of quality, to embracing the management of safety. Practical Application: The finding could help establishments improve overall worker safety and health using quality tools and techniques.