Growth phases of the safety professional
I’ve been working with safety professionals for more than 25 years, answering questions, providing guidance, helping them keep their employees safe, and helping keep their employers out of trouble. I suspect that my own career growth is typical and reflects what many others have gone through.
Initially, we go through a learning phase. The first few years on the job can feel overwhelming, when there’s so much to learn. That includes not only all the requirements, but even the simple matter of where to find the requirements along with the guidelines on how to best implement them. Building relationships within your own company to be more effective and developing professional contacts elsewhere who can provide guidance is all part of the initial learning phase.
After a few years, we start to reach a comfort level. Sure, we don’t know everything, but we have a pretty good idea of where to look. More importantly, we’ve developed some instincts about things that “just don’t look right.” Prior to this, if someone told us “that’s how things are done” we might have accepted it, but now we’re more willing to ask questions. We’re also feeling comfortable enough to push for going beyond the regulations. Maybe that is “how things have always been done” but we’re willing to push for improvements even if that requires overcoming some resistance to change.
After ten or fifteen years, we’re feeling pretty confident. We now have experience in many different areas. During the initial learning phase, every new responsibility required researching an entirely new topic from scratch. And although even the most experienced safety professionals don’t have everything memorized, we now have bookmarks for the most common reference points. We’re using resources that newbies don’t even know about. And very likely, we’re starting to mentor others and become the professional contacts for those less experienced.
The last phase often reverts to a learning phase. Perhaps the act of trying to answer questions from others creates a challenge that we had not previously encountered. Even if you think you have most of the answers, you’ll discover that you learn a lot by teaching others. This new learning phase makes us realize how much we still don’t know, and how much more we have to learn. Being a mentor is not only rewarding but generates a lot of self-reflection and growth.
As noted, I’ve now been in the safety field for more than a quarter century, and I’m still learning new things every week. That’s one of the reasons the job stays fresh and challenging. There’s always a new direction or new topic, even just a new approach to a well-known topic. May the learning never end!
