Part 2: What Doesn't Challenge You, Won't Change You

This is installment two in a twelve-part series on the future of the Safety and Health (S&H) profession, and the Safety and Health professional. Insights are based on one of the largest and most comprehensive ongoing qualitative research projects on leadership in the safety and health field. Review part one here.

The reward you get for overcoming your last challenge, is your next challenge.

-      TD Jakes

My two sisters and I were raised in a modest, rambler style home on West Cavour Avenue in the run-of-the-mill, modest midwestern town of Fergus Falls, Minnesota. Due west lay a sprawling grass lot the size of a regulation-sized football field that to this day remains every neighborhood kids’ sandlot. Looking back, that “football field-sized” lot turned out to be an underwhelming 0.31 acres. How vast the world seems when you're young, how straightforward life can be when your main concern is adhering to the policies laid before you.

In our neighborhood, you quickly became accustomed to football and neighborhood fish fries after church on Sunday, close-knit community cookouts, riding your Huffy everywhere, and growing up alongside friends and families who shared similar small-town values. Values such as: Work hard. Be honest. Do your best. Treat people with respect. Be a good citizen. Life was good; straightforward and routine.

Policies and Compliance

Since the beginning of modern safety and health time, ~1970 to be exact, the role of the safety and health professional has been to assure safe and healthful working conditions for working men, women, and teens. Doing so by enforcing the standards developed under the OSH Act and assisting organizations in their efforts to create a safe and healthful workplace. Our profession and its regulators have predominantly rested on the laurels of compliance, enforcement, and adherence since that time - often equating regulatory compliance to safety. This is especially true as defined by the functions, recruiters, and third-parties who develop our job descriptions. It seems external perceptions have created an incomplete reality of our role:

• Develop and execute safety and health plans according to legal guidelines
• Prepare and enforce policies to establish a culture of safety and health
• Evaluate practices, procedures, and facilities to assess risk and adherence to the law

Compliance. Enforcement. Adherence. Policies and procedures. How someone describes you shouldn't define you. The uncomfortable reality we need to acknowledge - the profession we represent is most often described in this light, both within our organizations and outside them. The safety and health professionals avatar is commonly portrayed as a command and control type, a clipboard commie, a compatriot to compliance. Or, another way to view it, this guy:

Historically, the safety and health professional has been depicted as being more committed to regulatory and standard compliance, than to rigorously reducing risk; more loyal to the legal system, than willing to walk with, work with, and wander with the worker on the shop floor or jobsite; more interested in reducing recordable rates than identifying how to make life better for the frontline and easier for the executive.

Change

Our research shows the highest performing safety and health professionals are redefining our role - questioning the merit of many regulatory requirements, engaging deeply with the worker, and integrating seamlessly into operations. They're reframing how the worker and their inevitable and unintentional error is viewed - not as the cause of trouble, nor an inconvenience to be controlled with tighter procedures and more policies, but as the solution.

Acknowledging that when it comes to understanding how work gets done and where risk needs managing, the smartest people in our organizations aren't at the corporate office, they're on the frontlines.

With that, we must not overlook how far compliance, adherence, and enforcement have propelled the profession and protected the worker. Since OSHA opened its doors in 1971, workplace fatalities have been cut in half. Occupational injury and illness rates have dropped 40 percent, and U.S. employment has nearly doubled from 56 million workers at 3.5 million worksites to 105 million workers at nearly 6.9 million sites. We’ve made significant progress. But…

The order is rapidly fadin'

And the first one now

Will later be last

For the times they are a-changin'...

The first one now (regulatory and standard compliance) will later be last. The order is rapidly fadin’, for the times they are a changin’.

Change is either intentionally constructed by you, or unforgivingly created for you. Just ask Kodak, Xerox, IBM, Blockbuster, Compaq, or elevator operators. The safety and health profession is in the midst of more than a change, we’re in the thick of a transformation - a renaissance in how we think about and practice safety and health. Moving from safety as a cost center to achieve compliance, to safety as a strategic investment for organizational performance. Shifting from working harder, to prioritizing what actually brings value. Evolving from telling workers what to do, to asking what they need from us; listening deeply and then delivering for the frontline. From accepting how we've historically been described, to ambitiously defining who we are becoming.

For the past decade, the thought leaders in our space have been gradually, but deliberately disrupting the safety and health space as most know it. Covid-19 accelerated that disruption for us. We have an opportunity to drive a truck through the doorway of possibility we've been presented before that doorway closes. Leaving outdated principles and practices where they belong - behind. It won't be easy; change can be painful - but combine pain with a plan, and you have a recipe for redefinition. Do you have a plan? The majority of the research participants have theirs, and they are deploying with urgency. For the safety and health professional moving forward, things will be far from straightforward and routine...

Putting Some Things Down

In 1990, the State of Minnesota began shutting down its Regional Treatment Centers, forcing the elimination of hundreds of positions. In 1995, when my dad got caught in the ruthless snare of government downsizing, he chose to pursue a position at another state treatment facility across the state. For the next 9 months, he made the three-hour drive across the state from Fergus Falls to Moose Lake, Minnesota every Sunday, and Friday, while our mom raised three pre-teens, amidst working the night shift at the local hospital. During that time, mom ran on a reserve tank of something only mothers and Navy SEALs can summon.

That was the first time I recall life being far from straightforward and routine. For the next ten years, following our move across the state to follow dad's career, I found myself trying to figure out a foreign town with unfamiliar policies, filled with foreign people whose traditions I couldn't seem to comprehend, and language I couldn't seem to learn to speak.

That season of life was not a great time for me.

I left behind what wasn't of value, including much of the pain that came with that season. But, the messages brought with me were undoubtedly worth the mess of that season. As we move into the next evolution of safety and health, what messages do we need to bring with us? What outdated policies and practices do we need to leave behind? Sometimes you need to put something down, in order to pick something better up.

The Next "Normal"

It doesn’t take 160 interviews with the thought leaders in our space to recognize safety and health professionals have a more meaningful message to share, a deeper mission to serve than what could possibly be defined in a job description. But it did take a global pandemic.

The next "normal" (which will be anything but normal) for our profession will be defined by hybrid workforces, novel hazards, human and organizational performance, virtual influence, crucial conversations, whole human health, and leaving much of the past behind. Many of the challenges we’ve faced are not going away any time soon, but instead present long-tail issues. How do you keep a workforce engaged and connected to organizational culture when 49% prefer hybrid working arrangements and one in three professionals currently working from home would look for a new job if required to return to the office?

Who do we need to be as safety and health leaders moving forward to facilitate crucial conversations regarding the invalidity of foundational principles we've stood on the shoulders of for five decades? What skillsets are needed to communicate and collaborate effectively with a multi-generational workforce, with as many as five unique generations in the workplace for the first-time history? How do we develop the attributes necessary to engage in an ESG (Environmental, Social, and Corporate Governance) conversation with an executive one moment, lead a complex event investigation with the frontlines the next, guide a discussion on whole human health with occupational medicine and HR in the morning, virtual training capabilities with our L&D teams in the afternoon? What attributes are needed to assure our understanding of the social and racial injustices many still face, while being an advocate for diversity, equity, and inclusion everywhere, for everyone.

Finally, who is responsible for ensuring our people feel seen, heard, and cared for, as another “silent” pandemic roars on, with 42% of essential workers reporting symptoms of anxiety or depression, 56% of them being the demographic currently entering the workforce.

The safety and health professionals skillset of the future is beginning to look a lot like that 0.31 acre open lot did to a nine-year-old while he and his father played catch on those endless summer nights: vast. How routine the world can seem when regulatory compliance and injury rate reduction are the preferred outcomes. How straightforward life can be when your benefactors greatest concerns are adherence and enforcement.

A Valiant Fight - An Opportunity

We've (mostly) overcome this challenge, Covid-19. With the safety and health professional playing a valiant role in the fight - developing and deploying plans to protect people, families, and communities, working tirelessly to keep doors open for business operations, learning how to be effective in previously foreign territory - daily or weekly dialog with senior leaders. We have yet to overcome our next challenge, an affixment to how we've historically been defined and an attachment to outdated techniques that have worked well to reduce minor injuries, but not had a similar impact on the injuries and illnesses that cause the greatest human suffering.

Our reward for overcoming this challenge? Our next challenge. A challenge that includes increased responsibilities, greater expectations, crucial conversations, the necessity to sharpen newfound strategic skillsets, and expanded organizational influence. We've cultivated new possibilities during this time. Possibilities to not just move our organizations forward, but propel an entire profession into the future. We've been given a seat at a table we've coveted for years - now we get to stay there. Our research confirms one of the attributes of world-class safety and health professionals, and world-class organizations is their ability to learn from their own operations - both their successes - and their "failures". As a profession, in order to best serve our people and organizations moving forward, we cannot afford to leave the learning behind as we leave the pandemic behind. How can you assure the learning comes with you and isn't only extracted, but implemented?

Picking Up Something Better

Consider asking the following of your operational leaders, your frontline supervisors, your workers at the sharp end of the spear, no matter your role. Asking, and then deeply listening. Doing so will help your organization leave what isn't of value behind and further solidify your seat at the table. Sometimes you need to put something down, in order to pick something better up.

Question #1: As we navigated the pandemic and our operations continued; what administrative or bureaucratic burdens did we remove, or did you ignore in lieu of getting work done?

• Simplified: What have we gotten rid of that brought no value? When we did, we made the work easier.
• Personalized: What's the dumbest thing we ask you to do that brings no value?

Question #2: What have we gotten rid of that is sorely missed and necessary?

*Thank you Dr. Todd Conklin for the inspiration behind these questions.

A Good Omen

Nine years ago, when I first walked into Dr. Perry Logan's office at 3M Center in St. Paul, Minnesota, I noticed a small rock he had sitting on the corner of his desk. He still has it to this day. You know the kind - those hobby store, desktop decorations that usually come with buyer's remorse and either 1) collect dust or 2) actually prompt reflection. This unexpectedly did the latter, with an engraving that read: "To change is to live".

These past 16 months have proven - what doesn't challenge you won't change you and change is evidence for growth. Those ten years following our families move were some of the most difficult I've experienced - and they changed me for the better. Looking back, what I thought were some of my worst days, turned out to be some of my best.

As we move forward, we cannot leave behind what this season and the challenges that came with it taught us. We cannot overlook who we became, in order to overcome. Nor can we miss the improbable opportunity in front of us - to redefine the intensely outdated "definition" of the safety and health professional - to acknowledge that the struggles we've faced during this season, could become our greatest successes.

It's time for a change, don't you think? Both in how we think about and practice safety and health.

Our reward for overcoming this challenge is our next challenge. Yesterday was the only easy day. Who is up for their next challenge? Something well beyond straightforward and routine.

With over a decade of experience with the 3M company in a variety of technical and leadership roles, Jason Kunz demonstrates his passion for the safety and health profession across multiple platforms. A forward-thinker, with the objective to elevate the health and well-being of all workers, Jason uses his voice to amplify the profession and the professional. His life journey, blessings, and struggles have inspired a commitment to building professional communities that ensure an empowerment of their people. Jason is a husband, co-founder, speaker, coach, and community advocate. He's a CIH and CSP, but mostly grateful to have a J-O-B and work with some of the most passionate and compassionate people on the planet. Married since 2019, Jason and his wife Malia call Minneapolis home.