Eliminating Ego in OHS

“You never really learn much from hearing yourself speak” – George Clooney

The Health and Safety sector is a niche sector which is often characterized by diverse viewpoints, methodologies, and professional credentials. Total consensus among safety professionals is often uncommon, with varying perspectives shaping approaches to workplace safety. Some OHS Professionals come into their profession through field-level experience, some come into their profession via academic pathways, and some mix both pathways. Despite the overarching objective of keeping workers safe, discord stemming from individual egos can unfortunately contribute to a breakdown in communication and as a result, the breakdown of Internal Responsibility Systems which can ultimately lead to preventable incidents.

The fundamental aim of Occupational Health and Safety is to keep people safe in the workplace. Hard stop. However, the complexity of human dynamics can introduce challenges which lead to disagreements and divergent priorities within the profession and across industries. Rather than prioritizing the real mission of ensuring people make it home at the end of every working day, personal agendas and conflicts may take precedence, potentially compromising safety both in theory and in practice within organizations.

Addressing these interpersonal challenges within the Health and Safety field as a profession requires that we drop our egos at the door. Whether we’re working with other safety professionals within our own organizations, partner organizations, or clients, or whether we’re working with other professionals and trades outside of our safety envelope, we need to be adaptable and open-minded, and never make safety (for lack of a better term) a pissing contest.

The Ego's Role in OHS

Ego can be loosely defined as a person's sense of self-importance or self-esteem, and it can manifest in different ways not only within the scope of what we do as OHS professionals, but also in the people and professionals we deal with on a day-to-day basis. Some of the ways ego can manifest as it relates to safety are:

Complacency: When individuals become overconfident in their abilities or the safety programs in place, they may become complacent. This complacency can lead to cutting corners, ignoring new or evolving best practices, or failing to recognize potential hazards.

Resistance to Feedback: Ego often prevents people from accepting feedback or constructive criticism. This resistance can hinder the identification and resolution of safety issues, as workers may dismiss concerns raised by their peers or supervisors. For OHS Professionals, ego can result in perceived intellectual superiority, which is closed-mindedness and an inability to see the value in other opinions or experiences. Checking our egos at the door means that we know that we don’t know everything, and that there’s always value in listening to others. It gives us the opportunity to learn and to grow in industry, in our own organizations, and as professionals.

Blame Culture: In environments where ego prevails, there's a tendency to shift blame rather than take responsibility for failures or ineffective procedures and policies. Blame culture discourages open communication and transparency, making it more challenging to address root causes of accidents or near misses. Consider times in your own career where you’ve worked with another contractor; either as a General Contractor hiring Sub-Contractors, or as a Sub working for a General. When an incident or near-miss occurs on the site, you’ll have one side pointing blame on the other most times instead of coming together to address root causes from a unified position. You may have one safety professional arguing with another about the content of the incident report or the corrective actions recommended without having worked together to determine what happened. Blame culture is a real derailer of progress and teamwork for something that ideally should be in the best interests of both parties to figure out.

The Impact of Ego on Safety Culture

A working healthy safety culture is built on trust, collaboration, and continuous improvement. Ego-driven behaviors can erode these foundational elements, compromising workplace safety. Ego keeps us in a fixed mindset in everything we do and how we approach things. When the foundation of our professional lives is laid using ego bricks, the entire building is at risk of collapse due to issues such as:

Lack of Trust: When ego takes precedence, trust among team members and between professionals diminishes. When trust breaks down between different internal departments, workers will see and feel that, and they may hesitate to speak up about safety concerns for fear of ridicule or backlash from their fellow workers or supervisors, or out of a lack of confidence that their concerns will be taken seriously.

Poor Communication: Effective communication is essential for conveying safety messaging and ensuring that procedures are followed as well as for reporting incidents and sharing corrective actions and lessons learned. Ego-driven individuals prioritize their own agenda over clear and transparent communication, leading to misunderstandings and misinformation.

Stifled Innovation: Innovation is important in safety. Ego can stifle innovation by discouraging collaboration and discouraging input from those who may have valuable insights or ideas. If you’re an ego driven OHS Professional, you’re not going to ask the proper questions and learn from the experts that do the work every day. When you operate from ego you’re going to be more inclined to approach the workplace with the “my book says you’re doing it wrong” attitude. That approach will almost always lead to disaster. People don’t want to bring ideas or propose solutions to problems to someone who doesn’t care to truly listen to them.

Be Humble

To build and grow a positive safety culture humility must take precedence over ego. Humility involves acknowledging our own limitations, valuing the input of others, and being open to learning and improvement. Here's how humility can transform safety:

Openness to Learning: Humble individuals recognize that there's always room for improvement. They actively seek out opportunities to learn from their experiences, as well as from the insights of others; both workers and industry experts alike. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, if you don’t know or understand what the work being performed is, you cannot understand how to keep people safe while they do it. Construction is very nuanced; between heavy equipment operators and laborers and electricians and carpenters the tasks and methods change. Using a blanket approach for everyone generally doesn’t work out. Ask questions, be open to ideas, try and understand the work itself before you throw a book at it. You catch more bees with honey is the saying, right?

Empathy and Respect: Humility allows for empathy and respect for others, including their perspectives, concerns, and contributions to safety. This creates a supportive environment where people, regardless of their positions, feel valued and empowered to put safety first. If people feel like you don’t respect the work that they do, they will feel like you have no respect for them as individuals. When you give them a voice and allow them to contribute, you’re much more likely to get proactive compliance.

Accountability and Collaboration: Humble leaders and professionals take accountability for their actions and decisions. They build and embrace a culture of collaboration where everyone plays a role in identifying hazards, implementing controls, and continuously improving OHS practices.

The point is that when it comes to health and safety, ego is not only counterproductive but also potentially dangerous. Prioritizing pride over practicality and the ability to work as a team and consider other people’s opinions and expertise can pose significant risks to workers and organizations alike, not to mention damage your own brand and legacy as a Health and Safety Professional.

In our corner of the world, the safety corner, the name of the game is doing our best to make sure that everyone goes home safe at the end of every working day. There’s no place for ego. Don’t let your ego stifle safety progress.

#Ego #HealthAndSafety #GrowthMindset

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