One of the common topics that come up when general health and safety discussions are taking place is the future of the profession and what health and safety practitioners will likely be doing in say twenty or even thirty years' from now.
From the start of the profession in the early 1800's when the Factories Act led to the deployment of the first safety inspectors, through the industrial revolutions of the early 1900, fast forward to the establishment of 1974 health and safety at work act until our current times where the first International Health and Safety Management System (ISO 45001) was recently released; the health and safety profession has gone through many major transformations over the years.
As human beings, we are all to an extent, relatively wary of what the future may hold. As organizations we analyse trends, benchmark ourselves against the leading companies in our industry and spend millions on consultants who we hope can provide us with the know-how of where we are likely to be in years to come.
The rise of health and safety as a value rather than a priority is something that we are steadily experiencing among leaders of major organizations as they better recognise their duty of care and the importance of their support in ensuring worker welbeing is never compromised.
I am going to discuss four key elements which I believe can shed a light on the possible future of our industry as a result of some of the current early trends taking place within the health and safety profession. Trends that are likely to guide us into a future that is very different from what we are used to today.
1. The search for "Generalists" begins
As the health and safety profession matures, professional standards within the various industries are being established at a phenomenon pace. Many of these standards also become obsolete very quickly as new technologies emerge and organizations take proactive measures by developing their own standards that may surpass those of the regulation.
Health and safety is now a common area of education in many of the world's best educational institutions, professionals are better educated and must learn the fundamentals of safety and health which, each year becomes broader in scope. Health and safety professionals now need to know about engineering concepts, workplace and general organization cultures, human behaviours, statistical analysis, fire safety, emergency response and crisis management, security, occupational health, ergonomics, human resources, industrial hygiene and many many more.
It is also becoming very clear that knowledge of environmental aspects of the business, sustainability, compliance and quality control are beginning to also fall into the same remit. Work titles such "safety managers" or "Environmental Manager" are slowly becoming more and more obsolete and being replaced by overall QHSE professionals in the higher management positions. On the other hand, with regards to less senior positions, as new fields are always emerging, the profession at that level will likely become broader and so will the rise of specialists occur in the fields of quality, health, safety, environment and emergency response. In some of the larger organizations, the field of health and safety will simply be too large for a single person to manage and a need for more specialists will become necessary.
The likelihood is however, that Generalists, who can put everything all together at the end will become more influential.
2. It's now all about Welfare!
When I think of health and safety in the past, for some reason the famous photo of construction workers sitting on a steel beam high above New York always comes to my mind. It also works as a strong reminder of how far we have come from the years when such workplace behaviours were considered completely normal. We have now become so much more proactive when it comes to employee welfare and this does not just stop at the physical injury realm. The majority of our work now is looking at eliminating the situations and behaviors that could lead to injuries. A complete shift in paradigm to practices we used to see back in the early 20th century!
I strongly believe that employee health and overall welfare is the next big shift in general perspective. Stress is becoming a big workplace issue. Statistics show that mental illness is now one of the biggest causes of workplace absenteeism. Safety professionals need to be educated to spot the early signs and symptoms of conditions such as anxiety, depression, sleep deprivation and the overall effects they have on workplace morale and efficiency.
Psychological issues such as bullying, harassment, racism and workplace violence are growing issues and are areas that safety professionals are likely to find themselves getting involved in as part of incident investigations. As entrepreneurship is being strongly promoted within the new generation of employee arriving into our work market, alone working and working from home will become more common and organizational policies will likely need to keep up in order to account for their well-being.
Health initiatives are also now becoming more common in our workplaces with many organizations investing heavily in employee wellness, fitness and mental health awareness programs.
3. Technology will continue to transform the profession
From virtual reality training to wearable sensors that monitor fatigue and posture, from drone inspections of hard-to-reach areas to predictive analytics that forecast where incidents are likely to occur, technology will continue to transform how health and safety professionals work. The professionals of the future will need to be as comfortable with data and technology as they are with risk assessments and safety inspections.
4. The profession will become more strategic
Health and safety will increasingly be seen not as a compliance function but as a strategic enabler of business performance. The professionals who will thrive in the future will be those who can connect safety performance to business outcomes, who can communicate effectively with boards and executive teams, and who can demonstrate the value of safety in terms that business leaders understand.
The future of health and safety is bright, but it will belong to those who are willing to evolve, to broaden their skill sets, and to embrace the changing nature of the profession.