My HSE Career Part 1 - Communication Coordinator

It was a bright summer morning, and I was hurrying somewhere important when I met Polina Tikk. She was in a hurry too, but we stopped to say hello anyway - being 20+ years old in 2007, you couldn’t pretend to listen to a podcast and just walk by.?

"By the way, are you looking for work?" - she asked.?

I was. I had just graduated from Sakhalin State University where I had been studying English for five years. All my cool friends were interpreters, and I wanted to be one too. So I studied and worked at the same time, and got bored from this profession a month before graduating.?

I also worked as a journalist, but this was too “political” for me… so I was looking for something new.?

"I am leaving for the Czech Republic", - she said. - So I can get you an interview for my job if you’d like.?

Safety Day Cupcake

Polina’s job was to promote Occupational Health, Safety and Environment.?

"We need someone with English and writing skills", - I was told.

"Great, I am both a translator and a journalist!" - and that is how I became the lucky one, hired as a contractor to an international oil and gas company straight after graduation.?

(thank you, Arkady Ostrirov and Remco Caspers for believing in me then!)?

Frankly, I did not know much about Occupational Health and Safety. In Russia this was (and often still is) an extremely boring occupation, mostly associated with filling in multiple Soviet-style logbooks (by hand!) and showing those logbooks to even more boring people from authorities when someone gets hurt.

But real OHSE is different. Since the first days at work I knew that I found my calling. We were making videos, creating web-pages, writing articles, designing slides, organizing events, and all of this was for the best cause ever - for keeping people safe and protecting the environment.?

7 years later - I am the first in the company to receive NEBOSH Diploma in Occupational Health and Safety (thanks to the best NEBOSH teacher - Bob Salem)

And I was learning a lot, of course. My first communication materials required a lot of research for me. What is a safety harness? How do seat belts actually help? Why is PPE not the best control measure against hazards??

And, most importantly - how do I convince people to do the right thing for their own safety? (this question is still not 100% answered, even after 14 years of everyday practice).

But thanks to my colleagues, I was learning fast. Evgeny Kovalyov, Evgenia Rodina, Anastasia Shenina, Natalia Boldyreva, Alexey Zasutsky, Sergey Voronich, Vitaly Sukhanov were helping me a lot, and I was working hard to let the rest of the company know what they had been doing.?

One year after being employed temporarily via an agency, I was given a permanent contract.?

At the same time, Robin Bryden joined the company as Safety Manager, and we started implementing Life Saving Rules.?

To be continued…?