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Bureaucracy, influence and beliefs: A literature review of the factors shaping

the role of a safety professional

Article in Safety Science · October 2017

DOI: 10.1016/j.ssci.2017.06.006

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 Bureaucracy, influence and beliefs: A literature review of
the factors shaping the role of a safety professional

David J. Provan1, 2, Sidney W. A. Dekker1, Andrew J. Rae1

1
School of Humanities, Griffith University, 170 Kessels Road, QLD 4111, Australia.
2
Corresponding author e-mail address: [email protected]

Abstract

Safety professionals have been working within organizations since the early
1900’s. During the past 25 years, societal pressure and political intervention
concerning the management of safety risks in organizations has driven dramatic
change in safety professional practice. What are the factors that influence the role of
safety professionals? This paper reviews more than 100 publications. Thematic
analysis identified 25 factors in three categories: institutional, relational, and
individual. The review highlights a dearth of empirical research into the practice and
role of safety professionals, which may result in some ineffectiveness. Practical
implications and an empirical research agenda regarding safety professional practice
are proposed.

Keywords: Safety Professional, Safety, Institutional Work, Professional Practice.

Citation:

Provan, D. J., Dekker, S. W. A., Rae, A. J. (2017) Bureaucracy, influence and beliefs:
A literature review of the factors shaping the role of a safety professional,
Safety Science, Volume 98, Pages 98-112

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssci.2017.06.006.

(http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0925753517301157)
Received  17  January  2017,  Revised  10  May  2017,  Accepted  13  June  2017  
 1. Introduction
Since Hale’s (1995) reflections on the role of safety professionals in this
journal, the safety profession has grown in size, has spread across ever more
industries, and has become increasingly bureaucratized on the back of ballooning
regulations, organizational processes and a separation or professionalization of the
safety role (Townsend 2013, Dekker 2014, Pryor, Hale et al. 2015, Righi, Saurin et al.
2015). In the present review, we identify, collate and assess the past 25 years’ worth
literature on the practice of safety professionals. Consistent with Hale’s original
intentions, ‘safety professional’ is used for roles whose primary purpose is to provide
safety advice which may focus on specific hazards (e.g. process, transportation,
ergonomics, industrial hygiene), or constitute a generalist safety role to coordinate
advice and support (e.g. safety management systems, culture, contractor management,
emergency response).
The job design, title, objective and ‘mission statement of safety professionals
varies widely across industries and within organizations. Brun and Loiselle (2002)
found more than 100 different titles. Hill (2006) identified no common definition of
practice or common terminology to explain what safety professionals do. Even line
managers may not understand, nor does the general population (Lawrence 2008,
Ferguson and Ramsay 2010). The job might involve hazard recognition, evaluation
and control (Ferguson and Ramsay 2010), improving working conditions and
compliance (Walters 1999), ensuring good personal safety decisions (Leemann 2014),
developing safety culture and reducing injuries (Johnson 2014), influencing managers
to improve safety (Borys 2000), preventing injuries and fatalities (Manuele 2016),
monitoring the organisation’s resilience (Woods 2006) and building safety awareness
and infrastructure (Blewett and Shaw 1996). Given these disparate objectives of
safety professional roles within organizations, having a common understanding and
evaluation of safety professional effectiveness remains elusive for both organizations
and individuals themselves.
The limited research that has been conducted on safety professionals since
Hale (1995) is dominated by studies concerning tasks and education (e.g. Nedved and
Booth 1982, Dejoy 1991, Brun and Loiselle 2002, Blair 2004, Hale, Bianchi et al.
2005, Hale and Guldenmund 2006, Wu 2011, Chang, Chen et al. 2012). However,
within the last five years, some researchers have begun exploring the practice of

2  
safety professionals from an organizational and social perspective through the use of
ethnographic research methods (e.g. Olsen 2012, Daudigeos 2013, Pryor 2014,
Reiman and Pietikainen 2014). Whereas these studies offer some insights into the
variability and complexity of safety work, they provide no consistency in their
reflections on, and possible critique of, the expectations and actualities of the role of
safety professionals in organizations today.
The present review aims to; synthesize the existing disparate literature on
Safety Professionals within organizations, provide practical implications for safety
professionals and organizations, and contribute a set of specific questions that the
literature raises, but requires further empirical investigation to answer. A
comprehensive literature search was undertaken using Science Direct and EBSCOhost
as the host databases. Keyword searches used combinations of common terms, for
example: ‘safety manager,' ‘safety practitioner,' ‘safety professional,' ‘safety officer,'
‘safety advisor,' ‘OHS Manager.' Google Scholar was used to identify additional
cross-discipline literature. Citations and references were then used to probe related
publications. The literature review identified approximately 100 publications that
contributed commentary, theory and, or empirical research concerning the practice of
safety professionals. A thematic analysis was conducted through a social theory lens
as organizations are primarily complex human systems. A cognitive map was used to
organize these topics into twenty-five factors, eight themes and three categories that
relate to and shape safety professional practice (see figure 1). The categories were
termed ‘institutional,' ‘relational’ and ‘individual’ to describe the primary association
of these factors with either the environment, practice or person. Institutional factors
relate to the organization, its social and political context, and how it is managed and
operating. Relational factors point to the interaction between the safety professional
and other personnel and processes within the organization. Individual factors are
internal to the safety professional, their capabilities, knowledge, and beliefs. These
categories align with widely used social theory frameworks for ‘structure,' ‘agency’
and ‘identity.'

3  
Figure 1: Institutional, relational and individual factors shaping the practice of a
safety professional

2. Institutional factors
Safety professionals’ roles are shaped by the institutions they interact with –
government regulators, academic institutions, and professional bodies, as well as the
features of the organizations they work within. These factors guide, constrain and
enable the formation of a professional identity. Institutional factors form a large part
of the theoretical discussion in the literature; however, there has been a limited
collection of empirical data relating these to safety professional practice.

2.1 Safety Profession

Despite some evidence and argument to the contrary (Almklov, Rosness et al.
2014), the professionalization of the safety role is widely considered necessary for
advancing the quality of safety professional practice and improving the regard for
safety professionals. Professionalization involves service orientation, a code of ethics,
a specialized body of knowledge, academic education and qualification, and
continuous learning (Ferguson and Ramsay 2010). Safety professional certification
dates from 1970 in the United States through the American Society of Safety
Engineers (Gorbell 1970). Today there is a global network of safety practitioner
organizations and institutes known as INSHPO, and many countries have some form
of professional standards and a safety professional certification scheme. In response to
the growth in the safety profession, academic education programs for safety
professionals commenced in the early 1990’s, but with widely varying curricula and
differing internship or fieldwork requirements (Marshall and Mackey 1995, Arezes
and Swuste 2012). Some graduate programs were traditionally entirely technically
4  
focused which mirrored the tasks and functions of safety professionals in the
workplace as passive advisors on specific safety matters (Nedved and Booth 1982,
Swuste and Arnoldy 2003, Ferguson and Ramsay 2010, Wybo and Van Wassenhove
2015). The literature repeatedly recommends the inclusion of traditional management
(i.e. MBA curriculum) alongside risk management, with a focus on; communication,
management of change, influence without authority, human behavior, decision-
making, negotiation, conflict management, coaching and consulting, as well as safety
principles (Marshall and Mackey 1995, Adams 2000, Adams 2003, Swuste and
Arnoldy 2003, Ferguson and Ramsay 2010, Wybo and Van Wassenhove 2015,
Pearson 2016). In addition to technical, management and interpersonal content, safety
programs should include psychology and sociology (Swuste and Arnoldy 2003, Wybo
and Van Wassenhove 2015). In the mid-1990’s only 50% of tertiary safety courses
contained psychology units (Taylor 1995).
The relationship between education, experience, and career progression seems
less clear than in many other professions (i.e. engineering, medicine, law, finance).
Adams (2000) argued there is a sharp difference between how practitioners and
educators view the safety professional role and this is most evidenced by the gap
between how professional associations and academic institutions view safety
professional competence, as opposed to the practitioners themselves. In the UK,
Smith and Wadsworth (2009) found that while 88% of practicing safety professionals
believed that they had sufficient technical knowledge to provide advice, only 21%
were degree qualified. Education is not a major determinant of job content, and it
seems practitioners with vastly different levels of education from certificate to Ph.D.
carry out the same tasks within their organization (Hale and Guldenmund 2006). As
little as 20% of safety professionals are tertiary qualified (Smith and Wadsworth
2009) and academic programs are not comprehensively reflective of the skills safety
professionals require.
Safety professional associations are implementing barriers for entry into the
profession based on education and experience. Previously, the requirements varied
widely. Fowler, Sauer et al. (1998) undertook a review of safety professional job
advertisements in Australia during 1994-1995 and found that 60% specified tertiary
safety qualifications and 73.5% required safety experience. Even if certification of
safety professionals is credible evidence of skills and knowledge, Smith and

5  
Wadsworth (2009) found that organizations with certified safety professionals had
better management of technical issues (e.g. chemicals, stress, vehicles) but poorer
overall hazard management. This is consistent with the bias toward academic
education and with that of safety certification towards technical competency.
Garrigou and Peissel-Cottenaz (2008) studied practicing safety professionals in
France where there was no national professional certification program. In this study
of 372 participants, the researchers concluded that one-sixth of respondents were in a
position of great difficulty in their role, described as professional distress. These
findings included the following: 25% had poor cooperation with stakeholders, 36%
believed they were not part of an organization that focused on safety, 45% felt
isolated, 54% felt their company often compromised on safety, and 44% were not
invited to the management committee. Alarmingly, only 2.5% (9 of 372 participants)
felt at ease negotiating safety issues with management.

2.2 Regulation
A primary role of safety professionals is to enable their organizations to
comply with the law (Olsen 2014). Increasing goal and risk-based legislation has
coincided with a huge increase in demand for safety professionals. Organizations that
previously were required only to implement action/state requirements now require
expertise to interpret and translate legislation into company actions that demonstrate
compliance (Hale, Borys et al. 2015). Such regulatory compliance activity
increasingly dominates the tasks and activities of safety professionals (Dekker 2014).
Criminal penalties for breaches of vague and broad obligations (Niskanen,
Louhelainen et al. 2014), for example: ‘ensure a safe system of work’ and ‘ensure
hazards are managed,' coupled with personal criminal penalties, have driven the safety
approach of senior management and—consequently—the safety profession. The
compliance role of safety professionals has shifted from meeting legal obligations to
protecting the company and its officers (Ryan 1989), which may occasionally be
incompatible with the need to engage with regulators. Niskanen, Louhelainen et al.
(2014) found that safety professionals were less likely than workers to believe that
workers should talk freely to government safety inspectors.
The European Network of Health and Safety Professional Organisations
(ENSHPO) conducted the largest study on the role and tasks of safety professionals

6  
included in the present review. 5495 safety professionals from 12 countries completed
a 173-item questionnaire on the range and frequency of tasks performed, hazards
advised on and stakeholder relationships (Hale and Guldenmund 2006). 22 tasks were
carried out by more than 60% of safety professionals in all countries, with the top
tasks being: “check compliance with policy and law,” “risk assessments,” “job safety
analysis,” and “develop company policy.” These tasks provide clear evidence of the
significant influence of safety regulation on the role of a safety professional
throughout the developed world. That said, many believe that compliance is
insufficient to manage safety (Hill 2006) or has no impact on safety improvement
(Shannon, Robson et al. 1999). However, this relationship between compliance and
safety remains vigorously debated in the contemporary safety literature. Safety
compliance activity shaping the role of safety professionals has expanded from its
primary purpose to improve safety within organizations to; supporting liability
management for company officers and meeting bureaucratic requirements not directly
linked to managing safety risks.

2.3 Performance Measurement

Saying ‘good safety is good business’ has become popular (Mottell, Long et
al. 1995), based on the belief that minimizing operational risks enhances productivity
or protects against financial losses. Swuste (2008) suggests that the relationship
between safety and financial performance is not clear, citing the Bhopal Gas Disaster
in 1984 and claiming the catastrophic incident left the company financially better off
after the incident than while operating the asset. Only one-third of safety
professionals believe that safety gets consideration equal to financial objectives
(Smith and Wadsworth 2009). In the absence of safety fitting neatly into a model of
competitive profit, organizations stumble to express their safety goals. They may care
most about high consequence events but express their goals using largely irrelevant
low consequence event counting (Hopkins 2000, Dekker, Long et al. 2016), leaving
safety professionals to reconcile their personal understanding of what is important,
their understanding of the organization’s financial goals, their understanding of the
organization’s safety goals, and the formal expression of these. The goal conflict
present in safety professional roles is more significant than other professions, which is
exacerbated by the on-going debate in the safety literature concerning how to measure

7  
safety, and they may be ill-equipped to manage these demands.

2.4 Safety Bureaucracy

Safety professionals are central to the development and administration of
safety bureaucracies within organizations. These internal organizational safety
bureaucracies drive the activities and relationships of safety professional’s and further
reinforce their beliefs about safety management (Swuste, Gulijk et al. 2014).
Many organizations have developed stand-alone safety management systems
structurally separating safety requirements and activities from core business processes
and systems (Olsen 2014). Olsen (2014) conducted a survey of New Zealand safety
professional’s and found that a significant part of their role included writing safety
policies and procedures, documenting and auditing safety management. Some
descriptive studies have been conducted into the tasks and functions of safety
professional’s (Booth, Hale et al. 1991, Dejoy 1991, Brun and Loiselle 2002). These
studies highlight the range of activities of safety professional’s that can be linked to
core elements of safety management systems, including monitor and prepare reports,
inspection and auditing, regulatory compliance, emergency response, incident
investigation, hazard and risk assessment, and training.
Safety professionals have become administrators of safety bureaucracies, and
their reputation among the workforce has suffered. Cheng, Ryan et al. (2012)
conducted a questionnaire among construction workers ranking 15 management
practices that were important to safety performance. Having a ‘formal safety
organization structure’ was ranked second lowest with ‘safety promotion’ ranked
lowest. Common bureaucratic safety activities of ‘accident statistical analysis’ and
‘safety audit’ also ranked low in importance for safety. This proliferation of
bureaucracy has been identified by safety professionals themselves, with too much
paperwork being cited as one of the biggest barriers to building an effective safety
culture (Biggs, Banks et al. 2013). Other studies show that safety professionals rely
on bureaucratic processes to exert authority and influence in their organizations
(Olsen 2012, Daudigeos 2013).
Safety bureaucracies shape the nature of safety professionals’ relationships
with others in the organization. Through investigations, audits, and non-compliances,
companies impose discipline to non-compliant managers and rule-breaking workers

8  
(Hill 2006). Hill (2006) suggests that disciplinary action results in anger, not
improvements to safety. Talking about negative things like non-compliance and
incidents makes others ignorant, defensive or even hostile towards the safety
professional (Saari 1995). Hale (1995) identified ‘control preaching’, a role based on
the belief that others are unlikely to manage safety on their initiative effectively. This
hampers openness and learning. It is hard for line managers and front-line workers to
have the confidence and maturity to admit errors when the safety professional and
organization condemns any deviance or non-compliance, and only in rare companies
can these relationships be maturely handled (Hale 1995). Moreover, of course, in
complex, highly technical organizations, an effective safety professional cannot be a
tabulator of statistics, creator of a paper trail of compliance, cheerleader of past safety
performance, or a cost center that slows production (Woods 2006). Bureaucracies are
not conducive to empowerment, opportunity, diversity or creativity, which are
required to manage emergence and dynamic processes. Deference to the protocol
should be balanced with deference to expertise in complex systems (Amalberti 2013).

2.5 Safety Culture

Reiman, Rollenhagen et al. (2014) identified eight cultural archetypes and
described the potential challenges for a safety professional under each different type
of organizational culture. Biggs, Banks et al. (2013) related the most common barriers
to safety culture as reported by safety professionals are; competing business priorities,
production and cost pressure, and workload and time pressure. All aspects of safety
management have to exist alongside these real world issues (Biggs, Banks et al.
2013). Safety professionals who are not in touch with these cultural challenges easily
become isolated. Improving the safety culture of their organization is often described
as one of the key roles of a safety professional. Smith and Wadsworth (2009) studied
the relationship between safety cultures, quality of safety advice and safety
performance. While safety advice was associated with safety performance, there was
little association between safety advice and safety climate (Smith and Wadsworth
2009). This study suggests that safety professionals have no measurable impact on
the safety culture within organizations. In a contradicting study, Nielsen (2014)
demonstrated that changing the behaviors of a safety organization positively impacts
safety climate and reduces injuries. Change in culture can be created and facilitated by

9  
altering the safety professional’s behavior to be more engaging and participative with
line management and workers (Nielsen 2014).

2.6 Safety Structure

The safety professional’s role and formal ability to influence within their
organization rely on their structural position in the hierarchy (Wybo and Van
Wassenhove 2015). Some organizational structure attributes directly shape the role
and effectiveness of safety professionals including whether they are internal resources
or external consultants, organizational proximity to senior management, their formal
line of report, and the amount of personnel and financial resources.
Cameron, Hare et al. (2013) found organizations that relied solely on external
consultants rather than internal safety professional resources had three times higher
accident rates. This finding is consistent with previous studies (Hinze 2002), and
Hale (1995) suggested that external resources cannot effectively understand the
organizational context or adequately influence company policy. Interaction with the
most senior management is necessary (Reiman and Pietikainen 2014). Galloway
(2013) argues that the most senior safety professional should report to the
organization's Chief Executive Officer since safety is the ‘highest priority,' and Brun
and Loiselle (2002) conclude that this recognized hierarchical authority improves the
safety professionals ability to influence. This, however, is seldom the case (Pryor
2014). Most safety professionals have a low level of involvement with senior
management, and low attendance in management forums or participation in critical
decision-making and planning processes (Brun and Loiselle 2002, Pryor 2014).
There is an ongoing debate across industry about whether a safety
professional’s role should formally report to the line manager that they are responsible
for supporting, or through to a more senior safety professional. There are advantages
and disadvantages of both organizational safety structures. Woods (2006) suggested
that a key aspect of the role of a safety professional was independence. Safety
professionals should report outside the operational chain of command, as their role is
to challenge assumptions and models of risk held by line management and crosscheck
the rationale for decisions (Woods 2006, Haddon-Cave 2009). Structural separation
limits line management’s attempts to dominate, marginalize or ‘shunt aside’ the safety
professional (Woods 2006). Reiman and Pietikainen (2014) identified that there is a

10  
strong possibility for conflict between safety professionals and line management, and
while they try to make it work, it is necessary to maintain role independence. Silence
on the part of the safety professional can be driven by concerns not to expose a line
manager when they report to the person they are advising (Grote 2015). An
independent matrix style of organization with dual authority structures is more likely
to accept challenge and leverage it to improve (King 1999). Cameron, Hare et al.
(2013) found that the formal authority of the safety professional was related to
improved safety performance, and in all cases where safety professionals saw
themselves as having authority; they also held a senior position.
The disadvantages of independence and structural separation are that the
safety professional may be distanced from daily work and not sufficiently involved in
operational decision-making processes as they are happening (Woods 2006, Reiman
and Pietikainen 2014). Reiman and Pietikainen (2014) identified tensions that exist
between different safety functional roles in the organization, for example, OHS and
process safety. A formally structurally integrated group of safety professionals is
more likely to ensure alignment between all the safety professionals and this
synchronization across an organization positively influences overall culture (Wu, Lin
et al. 2010). In a further study that supports safety professional’s reporting outside
line management, Hinze (2002) found that sites, where the safety professional
reported to the site manager, had on average higher accident rates than those who
reported to a more senior safety professional or a head office manager.
On the other hand, a safety professional is a functional role, not hierarchal, and
it does not own nor is it accountable for safety (Wybo and Van Wassenhove 2015).
Safety is an accountability of line management, and it is argued that safety resources
should be integrated into the line structure to ensure full involvement with, and
support of a line manager's priorities rather than a structurally separate afterthought
(Galloway 2013, Wybo and Van Wassenhove 2015). Stalnaker (1999) suggests that
safety professionals too often don’t remember the fundamental relationship between
line management and support organizations and when they forget who is supporting
whom then problems ensue, and formal reporting relationships can prevent this. Wu
(2011), studying Hale’s three role types, found that the most common tasks of safety
professionals were associated with this role of ‘advice coordination,’ and the least
frequent were those tasks related to ‘safety expertise.' This suggests the increasing

11  
dominance of safety bureaucracy and line management direction on the role of safety
professionals. Further, safety professionals that report to line managers align their
goals and activities with engaging and protecting their line manager from the
organization's bureaucratic social threats rather than engaging and protecting the
worker from safety risk (Watchter 2011). Regardless of the formal resourcing
structures adopted, organizations need to ensure that the voices for safety are loud and
able to be heard (Hopkins 2009).
Safety professionals often have additional non-safety related duties that don’t
fit elsewhere (Ryan 1989, Johnson 2014). This may not be a detriment to safety
management. Cameron, Hare et al. (2013) found that including environmental
responsibility correlated with lower accident rates on site, for instance.
Research conducted in the United States referred to as ‘staffing for safety’ has
shown a direct relationship between accident rates and the ratio of safety professionals
to the overall workforce (Cameron, Hare et al. 2013). Accident rates reduced in line
with an increase in safety professionals up to a ratio of 1:50, however, it is more
important what the safety professionals do rather than just increasing the number
(Cameron, Hare et al. 2013). That said, despite the increase in safety professional
resources over the past two decades, Borys (2015) identified only two empirical
studies which have demonstrated a strong relationship between safety professionals in
an organization and its safety outcomes (Rebbitt 2012, Cameron, Hare et al. 2013). In
addition to safety personnel, Woods (2006) suggests that safety professionals should
be provided with significant independent funding and resources and the authority to
determine how it is invested. He believes that safety investments are most required
when line managers believe they can least afford it. Smith and Wadsworth (2009)
found that 27% of safety professionals felt that they had no influence at the level that
set the safety budget. Safety professionals are often best placed to identify the safety
investments required in their organization, however, have little direct control over
these decisions.

3. Relational factors
Safety professionals do not make decisions that manage day-to-day operations
and therefore needs to establish relationships with people and processes throughout
the organization. These relationships enable the safety professional to; understand,

12  
determine, and influence the direction of the organization in the interest of safety.
Hale (1995) was the first to describe the complex relational dynamics and the nature
of the interaction between safety professionals and line managers. However, in the
20 years since this discussion, there is limited research into the practice of the role of
a safety professional. There are some descriptive studies of activities (Reiman and
Pietikainen 2014) and a small number of studies that have explored the social aspects
of a safety professional’s role (Broberg and Hermund 2004, Garrigou and Peissel-
Cottenaz 2008, Theberge and Neumann 2010, Daudigeos 2013, Pryor 2014).
Line managers within organizations will not make decisions and take courses
of action that are unacceptable – or “unsafe.” However, the constructs of “safe” and
“unsafe” are subjective rather than objective. So, where there is a possibility that
things might be unsafe, there needs to be a process of alignment of beliefs, language,
and actions. This social process continues until there is broad agreement that a future
course of action is safe. “Safe” is not a standard to be reached; it is a point of
consensus among stakeholders.
Reiman and Pietikainen (2014) propose that safety professionals have three
key influence mechanisms: safety skills and knowledge (education, experience,
operational contextual knowledge), personal orientation and abilities (character,
courage, relationships), and organization (formal authority, structure, management
systems). Antonsen (2009) identified that the ability to get others to follow the safety
professionals advice in a given situation is based on 6 factors (that closely aligns with
Ferry 1987): organisational structures and formal authority, power from knowledge
and expertise, control of rewards and resources, coercive power (punishment),
alliances and networks (tap into others sources of power, and personal power
(charisma, political skill, individual characteristics). Daudigeos (2013) confirmed that
safety professionals rely on factors closely resembling the above two studies to
establish the power to exert influence in their organization (formal authority of others,
external knowledge, control of safety processes and information, and fear of
punishment through legal consequences).
The present review identified twelve relational factors categorized into four
relational ‘views’ that describe the nature of the way safety professionals determine
their position and how they relate to others: challenge, alliance, influence, and
authority (see figure 2). One view ‘challenge’ is that the safety professional is neither

13  
part of the decision-making process nor an impartial provider of information - instead,
they seek to shift the consensus towards their perspective through outside challenge
on behalf of safety. Another view ‘influence’ also holds that the safety professional
stands outside the decision-making process, however, provides information, options,
and advice to inform the consensus. The third view ‘alliance’ is that they are part of
the decision-making process and the champions for one end of the spectrum of
outcomes, always urging for a consensus with lower safety risk, however, they
participate and negotiate with stakeholders until alignment is achieved. The fourth
view ‘authority’ suggests that safety professionals are (or at least should be) the
ultimate decision-maker or arbiters of whether a course of action is safe.

Figure 2: Relational views of a safety professional towards stakeholders and safety

decisions.

3.1 Challenge
“If two people in the same organization always agree, then one of them is
unnecessary.” – Pater (2006)
A primary role of a safety professional is to challenge the assumptions,
priorities, and actions of line management (Woods 2006) and they have a professional
and moral responsibility to “speak up” (Rebbitt 2013). Organizations have become
increasingly bureaucratic with respect to safety management, and this has come at the
expense of the culture required for the open expression and consideration of diverse
ideas and opinions. Very few hierarchical and bureaucratic organizations tolerate
dissent well, and instead value and reward conformity (Haddon-Cave 2009, Rebbitt
2013). Rebbitt (2013) argues that this increasing bureaucracy has led to a weakening
of business ethics, retaliation towards dissenters and even pressure to break the rules

14  
to achieve organizational objectives. The right to disagree is fundamental one without
which good business ethics cannot survive (Shahinpoor and Matt 2007). Bad news is
seldom embraced, and managers may even avoid or minimize contact socially and
structurally with the safety professional to avoid it (Ryan 1989). There are three
mechanisms for safety professionals expressing challenge; speaking up, whistle-
blowing and constructive inquiry.

3.1.1 Speaking up
Speaking up can be considered a core part of a safety professionals role,
however, it has not been studied. Investigations into major safety disasters conclude
that the safety professional either didn’t raise critical safety issues or was unsuccessful
in ‘being heard’ and changing decision-making (Columbia Accident Investigation
Board 2003, Baker 2007, Haddon-Cave 2009). Morrison, Wheeler-Smith et al.
(2011) describe speaking up as a discretionary communication of ideas, suggestions,
concerns or opinion about work related issues with the intent to improve organization
functioning. Speaking up is necessary for safety as it opens up new perspectives for
decision-making and action (Grote 2015).
It can be personally risky for a safety professional without formal authority to
expresses their dissent, and to do so effectively they must obtain and polish
interpersonal skills, such as influence and persuasion which is not taught in formal
education (Rebbitt 2013). Rebbitt (2013) suggests that a safety professional should be
mindful of the personal impact of the information on line management and their
objectives; Is it a threat to them? Does it imply failure on their part? Does it provide
them a benefit? There are practical strategies that can be adopted by safety
professionals to challenge in less open environments including overtly playing devil's
advocate, implying agreement but expressing a different viewpoint, or the use of
sarcasm or a joke with an oblique reference (Rebbitt 2013).
There are several reasons for not speaking up about safety in organizations
mainly relating to uncertainty on a personal level. These reasons include status
differences, damaging relationships, feeling of futility, lack of experience in job or the
issue, adverse impacts on others, poor relationship with supervisor, fear of
punishment, fear of negative label, the conflict between efficiency and safety and time
pressure (Grote 2015). Peer pressure and personal uncertainty are powerful

15  
motivators; no one wants to stand out from the crowd and studies have repeatedly
shown that less than one-third of people witnessing inappropriate behavior will report
it (Rebbitt 2013).

3.1.2 Whistle Blowing

To counteract the bureaucratic pressure not to challenge the hierarchy, the
concept of the safety professional as a whistle-blower emerges in the literature (Hale
1995, Saari 1995, Antonsen 2009, Hansen 2012). Whistle-blowing is an act of
voluntary disclosure of inappropriate behavior or decisions to persons in a position of
senior authority in an organization (Sexty 2011). Hale (1995) describes the
‘controller’ role of safety professionals where they should step out of friendly advisor
or support role and condemn unacceptable practices with vigor when necessary. In
his discussion of the complex relationship with line management, Hale (1995)
suggests that safety professionals may need to learn how to become whistle-blowers.
Antonsen (2009) argues that employee safety representatives from trade unions in
some countries have been, and are institutionalized whistle-blowers.
Hansen (2011) takes an opposing political perspective and very clearly advises
safety professionals to know your corporate culture and do not go over your bosses
head. Stalnaker (1999) also argues that safety professionals should not undermine the
authority of line management. These views seem to promote the role of the safety
professional as being in service of line management rather than in service of safety
within the organization.

3.1.3 Constructive Enquiry

Rather than formal whistle-blowing processes, safety professionals and
organizations should work on developing a culture where clear and open disclosure of
concerns is encouraged and occurs (Rebbitt 2013). He suggests that safety
professionals have a role in promoting an open environment through embracing the
dissent of the workforce and management toward them. Challenge needs to be done
in a constructive manner using an enquirer method (Grote 2015), and honesty is not a
rationale for insensitivity (Pater 2006). Grote (2015) suggests that inclusive
leadership that explicitly values diverse contribution creates an environment of
psychological safety for people to take the personal risk required in speaking up.

16  
Tong, Rasiah et al. (2015) found that leadership empowerment behavior correlated
with a safety professional’s psychological empowerment, perceived organizational
support, and this, in turn, increased their safety commitment and safety teamwork.
Woods (2006) proposed the metaphor of “cold water and an empty gun” to
describe the safety professional that doused the production and cost objectives of the
organization due to safety concerns and then didn’t have a workable solution to move
forward. Safety professionals should offer practical solutions or functional processes
to arrive at practical solutions when they challenge line management and are mindful
of the production, cost and time objectives of the organization (Rebbitt 2013).
Organizations need to provide clear and comprehensive training on the benefits of
challenge, how to challenge and how to receive a challenge to both safety
professionals and line management (Grote 2015).
An important role of a safety professional is to challenge line management and
the organization for the purpose of maintaining or improving safety. As safety
professionals have increasingly aligned their roles with line management, they have
paradoxically weakened the diversity and strength of their voice for safety in the
organization. Having conflicting views on safety is a safety resource for
organizations, by serving as a kind of requisite variety that facilitates learning
(Antonsen 2009). Bringing this diversity of viewpoint is the ‘informative’ (Woods
2006) role of a safety professional however it is often unwelcome information and
creates tension between the line manager and the safety professional.

3.2 Alliance
“None of us are as smart as all of us together.” – Greer (2001)
Safety professionals create alliances with people, programs, and objectives of
the organization. Safety advice that is positioned in a way that contributes or
compliments needs or wants of others in the organization is likely to be received
differently than that expressed as a challenge. Alliance is described as a win-win
outcome for the safety professional and other people’s agendas.
Theberge and Neumann (2010) propose five practical strategies for safety
professional influence and political manoeuvring all related to alliance with other
stakeholders and programs: recognise the agenda and interests of others, identify
possibilities for ‘goal hooking’, attend to the ‘soft systems’, implement organisational

17  
arrangements to advance the agenda, and implement tools that integrate into existing
management processes.
The two key groups of stakeholders for safety professionals to situate their
advice in alliance with are line management and front-line workers. Greer (2001)
suggested that none of us are as smart as all of us together and while safety
professionals think they need to have the answers and are the resource for everything
concerning safety, many times they do not even know the questions. Safety
professionals should engage workers and line managers and seek their advice and
active participation in devising solutions which not only improves their quality but
also moves the ownership of safety processes from the safety office to work sites
(Greer 2001). Safety professionals need effective facilitation skills to build their
methods on the participatory involvement of line management and the frontline
workforce (Limborg 2001). Goal alignment between the safety professional, line
management, and the workforce through alliance is important for working together to
improve safety. Production goals are acute, ‘how much did you produce today?’
whereas, safety goals are chronic, ‘how many injuries did you have this month?’ Line
managers expect safety professionals to embrace and contribute to the bottom line
performance of the organization (Woods 2006, Lawrence 2008, Laduke 2011, Wybo
and Van Wassenhove 2015). Traditionally safety professionals have taken the role of
‘expert’ or ‘controller’ and challenge line management where goal conflict exists.
Instead, they should focus on alignment of objective and tasks with line management
and the workforce (Hale 1995).

3.2.1 Line managers

Woods (2006) argues that safety professionals need to contribute to all
organizational goals. A safety professional cannot be a safety ‘expert’ in an
organization if they are always troublesome to the business by negatively impacting
time and cost (Reiman and Pietikainen 2014). Adams (2003) suggests that too often
safety professionals are focused on being a technical expert with little concern for a
management solution, which sees line management view them in terms of regulatory
compliance rather than overall business improvement. Too often the advice, actions,
and decisions of a safety professional may be seen as antagonistic in that they
negatively impact business resources (Bryant 1999). As a result, many companies
prefer a safety professional that maintains a low profile and therefore doesn’t interrupt
18  
production (Ryan 1989).
Safety professionals have to learn how to communicate with managers more
effectively and develop a detailed understanding of the manager's problems to advise
effectively (van Dijk 1995). Hansen (2011) suggests safety professionals get the
‘green light’ by aligning advice with the bosses’ priorities and having detailed plans.
Safety professional’s need to learn how to sell ideas to management and create the
business case for safety (Ryan 1989, Hill 2006).
In a 24 task questionnaire administered to safety professionals, Dejoy (1993)
found that the item rated as lowest importance and the lowest time spent was
"developing methods to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of control systems." Safety
professionals appear to maintain ignorance and benevolence towards the financial
objectives of the organization. Greer (2001) describes this well using the statement
‘seek first to understand, then be understood’ (Covey 1989) referring to a safety
professional’s responsibility to know first and foremost what drives the organization's
senior management and work with this rather than against it. The safety professional
is regularly out of goal alignment with the organization, and they have created a
culture of separateness by implementing programs that do not contribute to the
company’s financial and production goals (Hill 2006). Hale (1995) describes an adult
– adult relationship between line managers and safety professionals that focus on
mutual support and the achievement of common goals. Manuele (2003) agrees with
this and describes the goals of a safety professional as; effectively and economically
reducing risk, contributing to the organization's goals in addition to safety, and being
an active participant in achieving all of line management’s goals.
Safety professionals have the opportunity to be change agents that help their
organization realize economic optimization and in turn create for themselves the
credibility and power to improve safety (Hill 2006). For themselves, safety
professionals who are problem solvers, multi-skilled and demonstrate results that are
woven into the organization's financial goals are viewed as a valuable asset (Hill
2006).

3.2.2 Front-line workforce

Knowing and working with the needs and wants of the front-line workforce is
a useful source of alliance for safety professionals and positions their advice with the

19  
support of the workers exposed to the safety risks. Safety professionals need to ask
more questions because what they believe is unsafe is probably the fastest and most
effective way to do work (Walters 1999). Walters (1999) suggests that understanding
the needs and reasoning behind workers decisions is time-consuming, but these
workers are also resourceful at bypassing undesirable safety controls. Solutions to a
safety concern will always be better if resolved jointly through interactive problem-
solving sessions with the safety professional and the front-line workforce with as
much latitude and judgment to the worker as possible (Walters 1999). Safety
professionals should treat workers with respect and listen to their safety concerns and
solutions in a way that acknowledges the workers like the safety experts that they are
(Stalnaker 1999). Limborg (2001) proposed workers should participate in prioritizing
problems to be solved, and a safety professional’s solution should always be
considered insufficient if front-line workers have not been actively involved in
developing, testing and introducing changes.
The body of resilience engineering literature expands this participative
strategy of safety professionals to one of enabling and facilitating the adaptive
capability of the organization. Woods (2006) proposes that safety professionals seek
ways to enhance coordination across the normal chain-of-command and
organizational boundaries enhancing resilience and reducing brittleness. Reiman,
Rollenhagen et al. (2014) suggests safety professionals promote novelty and diversity,
which leads to self-organised order and adaptation. These strategies will enable the
organization to anticipate and recognize issues that are not known or previously
experienced (Pidgeon and O'Leary 2000).

3.2.3 Business Processes

Management knowledge and skills are useful for safety professionals to create
an alliance between their advice and the people, objectives, and programs of the
organization. A safety professional requires both technical and management skills to
be effective and they are equally important (Ryan 1989, Adams 2000, Leemann 2002,
Swuste and Arnoldy 2003, Blair 2004, Wu, Lin et al. 2010). However, commonly
safety professionals are unable to speak the language of the business (Hill 2006) and
due to a lack of broader management capabilities are isolated from mainstream
decision-making (Leemann 2002). Safety professional’s need to understand the

20  
business system as a whole and be able to communicate from the unique perspective
of senior management (Adams 2003).
Safety professionals perform below line management’s expectations in
management skills, strategy and organizational support (Lawrence 2008): line
managers perceive safety professionals as too technically focused, not able to view
issues from the big picture, and not able to integrate programs into the organization.
Peter Wagner & Associates (2010) also found that CEO’s felt safety professionals
were technically proficient in general safety knowledge but lacked core capabilities
around understanding business strategy, change management, and influencing skills.
Safety professionals need skills similar to line management, and traditionally
many organizations have recruited safety professionals with a management
background (Hale 1995, Leemann 2002, Wybo and Van Wassenhove 2015). Hale
(1995) warned that line managers entering safety roles retain the norms of the people
they must now ‘control,’ lacking the independence or credibility to challenge former
and future colleagues.
Blair (2004) found that safety professionals reported business acumen as a top
competency needed for business survival. However, when Chang, Chen et al. (2012)
surveyed safety professionals for what was required to achieve greater safety
performance, the lowest ranked dimension of tasks was ‘apply business principles.'
Even if safety professionals must develop management skills to be effective in their
role (Adams 2003), financial and business skills are rarely taught in safety education
(Hill 2006). Safety professionals with management skills can align safety
management with the organization's goals, processes and culture as well as manage
their teams and resources effectively (Seabrook 2003).

3.3 Authority
“On issues of risk and safety I think the issue is really power.” – Charles Perrow
(cited in Antonsen 2009)
Safety professionals relate to others through the use and leverage of formal
authority to progress their firm views about safety. Line management has the
authority for most decisions in an organization, however, senior management and
safety professionals determine safety processes that bound these decisions. Power is
an issue in safety management more relevant than culture (Antonsen 2009, Dekker

21  
and Nyce 2014). Dekker and Nyce (2014) propose that power is everywhere in safety
through the roles of hierarchy (i.e. line management) and elites (i.e. safety
professionals). Safety professionals may have the knowledge but not necessarily the
power, and conversely, line management has the power but not necessarily the
knowledge (Borys 2000). Borys (2000) argues there is the potential for safety
improvements to fall through this knowledge-power gap. A safety professional should
enable the safety knowledge of line managers to continuously develop to align
knowledge with hierarchical power (Borys 2000). However, organizations should
also ensure that safety professional empowerment and authority does not result in the
marginalization of local system specific safety expertise held by the workforce
(Almklov, Rosness et al. 2014). A safety professional’s power and authority to exert
influence in organizations is an important and complex issue with advantages and
disadvantages for safety management. Except for the study conducted by Daudigeos
(2013), there is limited research on safety professional power within organizations.
Line managers, particularly senior management holds high levels of formal
and informal power in safety, which can easily suppress the concerns of safety
professionals in the organization. This power and accountability dynamic between
the safety professional and line management has been further imbalanced by
Company Officers due diligence obligations and individual criminal liabilities in all
developed countries (O'Neill and Wolfe 2014). Dekker and Nyce (2014) argue that if
there if safety in power than line managers should give more of it to those below
including workers and safety professionals who together are most likely the best
placed to develop safety solutions. A safety professional needs to develop their
formal and informal power and authority to influence and ‘talk truth to power’
(Dekker and Nyce 2014). There is vigorous debate in the literature about whether and
how much formal authority a safety professional should have. Sources of formal
authority that enable safety professionals to make decisions or have decisions made in
their favor include senior management, safety systems and rules, and decision rights
(formal rights of sign-off and veto).

3.3.1 Senior management

Through their access at many levels of the organization, safety professionals
use senior management authority to sanction advice and decisions that apply to

22  
middle management and the front-line workforce. Safety professionals get 'buy in'
from senior management to strengthen their authority over line management and then
further use regulation and audit strategies to influence them (Olsen 2012). In some
cases, safety professionals use a strategy of making line management performance
visible to top management (e.g. overdue corrective actions), and base most of their
advice on reactive information (e.g. incidents, audits, and regulation change) rather
than proactive insights (Olsen 2012).

3.3.2 Safety Systems

Safety professionals use the formal authority of the company’s safety systems
and rules that they devise and administer to support decision-making in their favor.
This source of authority is the practical expression of bureaucracy in the earlier
section on institutional factors. Safety professionals rely most on the authority
elicited to them and their advice through the organization's safety systems and
bureaucratic processes (e.g. safety reporting, incident investigation, and audit) (Olsen
2012, Daudigeos 2013).
Olsen (2012) argues that safety professionals have difficulty influencing
decisions because they are placed on the sidelines of the organization. While she
found that safety professionals have three parts to their role - advising management,
safety management systems, and regulatory compliance – their political strategies to
influence decision-making in the organization mostly followed and leveraged their
available bureaucratic safety processes (Olsen 2012). Safety professionals use their
technical knowledge as power over managers to create dependency as well as
maintaining tight control over safety processes (Blewett and Shaw 1996). In this role,
the safety professional can use the safety system to play the role of ‘doctor’ and the
line manager the ‘patient’ who receives a diagnosis and recommendation without
question (Broberg and Hermund 2004).

3.3.3 Decision rights

Woods (2006) argues in support of the safety professional having sources of
formal authority to make decisions about safety investment and to review and approve
operational decisions. Cameron, Hare et al. (2013) identified aspects of the safety
professional’s role that resulted in lower accident rates and some related to the

23  
authority of safety professionals. Safety professionals that had the authority to give
instructions to the front-line workforce had half the accident rate than those who just
advise line management. Organizations, where the safety professional vetted and
approved sub-contractors as part of their role, had lower accident rates. Cameron,
Hare et al. (2013) propose that safety professional formal authority and involvement
in operational decision-making are the factors that improved safety performance.

3.3.4 Limitations of authority

There is a wide critique in the literature of safety professionals relating to
others through formal authority based on two main arguments: less optimal and
sustainable decisions and marginalization of local expertise.
Unilateral mandates from a safety professional are usually short-lived,
operationally problematic and require constant monitoring (Hale 1995). This
directive approach relying on bureaucratic enablers creates adversarial relationships
with line management and the workforce. While consensus and alliance based
approaches require more time, they create better and more sustainable long-term
solutions (Walters 1999). Through using formal bureaucratic strategies, safety
professionals are not able to convince management that they should increase the
safety standards above that required for regulatory compliance and the safety
professional mainly works on systems and processes to improve safety (Olsen 2012).
Safety professionals with formal authority over safety decisions may lead to less
optimal operational and safety outcomes. Safety professionals should justify their
advice and input into organizational decision-making in ways beyond senior
management sanctions and safety system requirements.
One concerning potential consequence of a safety professional utilizing formal
authority is that the ‘knowledge’ generated by a safety professional might displace or
marginalize existing local or system specific safety knowledge embedded in
operational practices (Almklov, Rosness et al. 2014). Almklov, Rosness et al. (2014)
provide case studies in the marine and rail industries where they observe discourses
based on generic approaches to safety management that result in a disempowerment
of the workforce and their perspectives. The safety professional has ‘model
monopoly’ over ‘safety management’ and leads to the worker feeling powerless
(Almklov, Rosness et al. 2014). A safety professional’s formal authority and the

24  
development of the resulting safety bureaucracy based on generic international
standards shifts power and authority from the workforce and even line management
towards safety professionals, regulators and third parties to the detriment of front-line
system specific safety expertise (Almklov, Rosness et al. 2014).

3.4 Influence
“A safety professional needs to bring relevant information and be heard by the
organization.” – Woods (2006)
Safety professionals influence organizational decision-making through
providing advice for decisions that others are making, as well as how they create pre-
conditions in the organization that influences decision-making without direct
involvement. Safety professionals need to know how to navigate the organization
and involve and get the support of the right people to influence decision-making
(Broberg and Hermund 2007). Many safety professionals are unclear how to
influence others within companies and are frustrated by giving, as they see it, good
professional advice that is not followed or implemented (van Dijk 1995). Swuste and
Arnoldy (2003) suggest that the safety professional’s personal effectiveness and
ability to influence and stimulate others are as important to safety as formal
management systems. Peter Wagner & Associates (2010) found that Chief Executive
Officers of organizations commonly believe that safety professionals lack the
requisite influencing skills and the ability to get things done in their organizations.
The most comprehensive research on safety professional influence was
conducted by Daudigeos (2013) to understand how they enact practical agency to
maneuver around formal constraints within their organization. The findings of the
study conclude that safety professionals rely on ‘relational-legitimacy building,'
(external networking and references from other organizations) ‘unobtrusive influence
tactics’ (adaptive framing of issues by selectively using managerial, administrative,
accounting, legal, technical, and moral arguments to legitimize and promote safety)
and ‘use of symbolic enablers' (circulating an anecdote that speaks in favor of the
practice they are trying to promote and touting the actions of individual managers
building 'local heroes'). Internal networking is used to leverage the formal authority
of others, which compensate for limitations in a safety professional’s formal authority
and if the safety professional meets resistance than they quickly change to an

25  
argument based on the risk of legal repercussions (this finding is consistent with
Olsen, 2012).
The safety professional has a role in undertaking actions that are targeted to
create the preconditions and expectations for others to act in a certain way (Reiman,
Rollenhagen et al. 2014) and this fosters positive safety attitudes that stimulate middle
managers to apply safety processes (Wybo and Van Wassenhove 2015). In this way,
the safety professional is the teacher of employees and management about safety (van
Dijk 1995). A safety professional can support the ongoing development of open and
respectful communication about safety through honest story-telling and personal
vulnerability (Forck 2010). In this way, safety professionals need to be the
courageous, open and honest person that they preach about when they talk about
safety culture. Blewett and Shaw (1996) found that safety professionals that enabled
individuals to make safety decisions and create change for themselves reduced their
formal authority over processes but increased their informal socially constructed
power to influence.
When safety professionals are unable to influence what they think are the right
things for safety due to organizational and social constraints of cost or culture, it can
lead to deep cognitive dissonance, guilt, and disillusionment (Watchter 2011). A
survey in the United States identified safety professionals as number 5 on the list of
jobs where workers hate their bosses (Johnson 2014). Johnson (2014) argues that
while most line managers do not know what safety professionals do, they do not
support, don’t listen, reject ideas, and don’t want to spend money on safety. Safety
professionals complain, vent, insult line managers from a safe distance and
consequently ‘stress-out.' Two-thirds of safety professional’s that reported ‘hating’
their boss also reported high job stress indicating that extreme frustration festers
without resolution when safety professionals have unsatisfying experiences
influencing others (Johnson 2014). Safety professionals influence others through
relationships, interpersonal skills and understanding organizational context.

3.4.1 Relationships
The relationship between the safety professional and the line manager making
a decision is important for the safety professional’s ability to influence decision-
making. Who safety professionals are, and the way they engage with others is as

26  
important as formal structures (Swuste and Arnoldy 2003). A safety professional
needs to develop credibility and trust within their organization to exert influence
(Stalnaker 1999). Their level of credibility and trust are determined by line
management and the worker's perceptions of, knowledge and expertise, openness and
honesty, and concern and care (Peters, Covello et al. 1997).
Two studies have been conducted into trust between safety professionals and
others in the organization. Pryor (2014) studied the relationship between safety
professionals and line managers and found trust to be a key factor in their level of
influence. She found that trust from a line manager’s perspective takes time and is
based on the safety professional’s track record, technical knowledge, interaction with
others and personal attributes. These personal attributes include, being upfront and
honest, not playing politics, straight talking, sorting the ‘wheat from chaff’, handling
pressure, taking control in crisis, showing initiative, calling the shots, personal grunt,
a positive 'can do' approach, being a good communicator, and high emotional
intelligence (Pryor 2014).
Conchie and Burns (2009) studied workers trust in information sources and
the resulting impact on workers safety behavior. Workers trusted the safety
professional more than their project manager, supervisor, and workmates when it
came to communication about a safety risk and self-reported that their intention to
change risk related behavior was greater following communication from safety
professional than communication from other sources (Conchie and Burns 2009).
These findings are similar to a study conducted in Australia that found safety
professionals have the strongest influence on site safety, followed by supervisors, then
workmates (Dingsdag, Biggs et al. 2008). Conchie and Burns (2009) conclude that
the three-dimensional model of, belief in knowledge and expertise, open and honest,
caring and concerned for others, does influence the level of trust in the safety
professional.

3.4.2 Interpersonal Skills

Safety professionals are unlikely to be able to develop long, trusting
relationships with each of the line managers making decisions within the organization.
The relationship divide may be able to be bridged by a safety professional with well-
developed interpersonal skills that can create a constructive trusting environment in a

27  
first-time conversation. A safety professional requires a broad and well-developed set
of interpersonal skills to be effective at influencing others (Swuste and Arnoldy
2003). Swuste and Arnoldy (2003) suggest that these interpersonal skills include
communication, negotiation, facilitation, problem-solving, decision-making, and
assertiveness. The technical skills of a safety professional can be considered
necessary threshold competencies. However, it is their interpersonal skills that are the
differentiating competencies between effective and ineffective safety professionals
(Leemann 2005). A safety professional should present organizational facts and
scientific evidence to support their advice (Johnson 2014) and do not stretch the truth
to have influence (Stalnaker 1999). Communication skills are essential, but without
credibility, they are not enough (Hill 2006).
Except for the Chief Executive Officer, a safety professional has to be able to
communicate effectively with a more diverse stakeholder group than any other role in
the organization, including senior management, line management, employees,
professionals, contractors, and regulators. The communication ability of a safety
professional is the most important capability in determining their effectiveness in their
role and ability to influence others (Stalnaker 1999, Seabrook 2003, Blair 2004, Pater
2006, Peters and Peters 2006). Blair (2004) found that safety professionals rated
‘communicating effectively’ as the highest rated competency for their success.
Communication skills enable a safety professional to influence others and effectively
tackle the difficult situations in the workplace without becoming defensive including
dealing with conflict, mediating tensions, speaking truth to power, neutralizing
resistance and confronting unacceptable behavior (Pater 2006).
Pryor (2014) found that the main reason for senior management to replace and
restructure the role of safety professionals is that they do not have the interpersonal
skills to influence at a senior level. A safety professional needs to bring relevant
information and have themselves heard by the organization (Woods 2006). Clear
communication skills that include the ability of the safety professional to talk the
language of business are critical (Adams 2003) however, training in such skills is
missing from most courses and workplaces (Taylor 1995). Veltri (1992) suggested
that improving the effectiveness of safety professionals’ communication with senior
management would enable safety to move from bureaucratic compliance with
regulation to influencing creating and sustaining strategic value.

28  
 Swuste and Arnoldy (2003) argued that personal influence skills are the most
critical for a safety professional and they must understand: competition and
cooperation, dealing with high-pressure, changing others perspectives and generating
collective ownership. Peters and Peters (2006) also believe that personalities involved
in safety decision-making will prevail over poorly presented and communicated
analytic logic. Negotiation skills are useful for the safety professional as
compromises and trade-offs are customary in all organizational systems (Peters and
Peters 2006). Safety professionals themselves identify interpersonal skills, such as
communication, negotiation, and understanding human behavior as some of their top
self-defined training needs (Garrigou and Peissel-Cottenaz 2008).

3.4.3 Organisational context

Safety professionals need to intimately know how their organization functions,
including organizational behavior, structure, budgeting, planning processes (Swuste
and Arnoldy 2003). However before safety professionals can get things done
formally, they need to know the informal organization - the people, political
interrelationships and underpinnings (Hansen 2011). A safety professional needs to
figure out what is happening within the organization at any point in time, from the
concerns of senior management to the daily challenges of frontline work. The safety
professional needs to at all times maintain a ‘finger on the pulse’ of the organization
to provide useful and credible advice (Saari 1995, Woods 2006, Hansen 2012).
Organizational knowledge and operational context enable the safety
professional to advise and provide support as and where it is needed in a practical and
effective way. Safety professionals that focus on incidents will never understand
what works in normal situations and thus they need to be experts in daily work as
much as the exceptions (Saari 1995). Swuste (2008) argues that ‘you will only see it
if you understand it’ and thus a safety professional will unlikely be effective until they
understand the organization, the work, and the technology intimately.

4. Individual factors
The individual safety professional influences the performance of their role
through who they are, what they know, and their career experiences. These four
individual factors are: safety beliefs, domain safety knowledge, knowledge worker

29  
skills, and risk understanding are categorized as relating to either the beliefs or
capabilities of the safety professional.

4.1 Safety Beliefs

A safety professional’s values, background, education and work experience
shape their beliefs about safety, organizations and human behavior (Swuste, Gulijk et
al. 2014). Safety professionals predominately believe in traditional approaches to
safety management and focus their advice on improving bureaucratic compliance as
well as the safety behaviour of line managers and front-line workers (Saari 1995,
Brun and Loiselle 2002, Broberg and Hermund 2004, Hill 2006, Hollnagel 2009,
Olsen 2012, Walter 2012, Swuste, Gulijk et al. 2014, Manuele 2016).
Hill (2006) suggested that safety professionals predominately focused on
traditional safety management approaches, as they believed that “if it ain’t broke
don’t fix it.” By continuing to do the same things, safety professional’s maintain their
role authority and security through their understanding and competence in these
methods (Hill 2006). Hollnagel (2009) described the process where, ‘what a safety
professional looks for is what they find’ regarding their beliefs about how to manage
safety, for example, non-compliance with systems, unsafe behavior, uncommitted
leadership, or poor culture.
Safety professionals are united in their belief that the human dimension (rather
than technical or organizational) takes precedence for safety improvement efforts
(Brun and Loiselle 2002). Brun and Loiselle (2002) found that safety professionals
see safety as an individual responsibility and a question of attitude and behavior, so
they argue it is important to modify human behavior through precise work methods.
Manuele (2016) stated that safety professionals have to battle the human element and
those that are willing to take a risk with their safety. Safety professionals believe that
people are the problem when it comes to safety management and this belief extends to
workers, line management, senior management and often other safety professionals.
Olsen (2012) found that in addition to the human dimension, safety
professionals are also very focused on the organizational dimension of management
systems and compliance. In a survey of safety professionals in the United States,
Walter (2012) identified training, additional resources and improved management
support as the key things needed to improve safety to respond to the problems with

30  
worker competence, cost, and management commitment. Safety professionals
believe that the following human and organizational improvements will improve
safety: employee accountability and ‘buy-in,' communication, online safety software,
safety incentives, detailed workers compensation data, more safety equipment and
more time (Manuele 2016).
Despite the changing revelations in safety science, Swuste, Gulijk et al.
(2014), found in a study of safety professionals in the Netherlands that human failure
remained the dominant explanation for accidents. Professional publications write
about accident proneness theory and company programs and safety promotions focus
on topics like; instructing workers in safe procedures, more safety training, and
communication about unsafe behavior (Swuste, Gulijk et al. 2014). This strategy
focuses all safety attention and intervention on the ‘user,' not the technology,
workplace or organization (Broberg and Hermund 2004).
Swuste, Gulijk et al. (2014) argue that safety professionals do not keep up
with academic developments and are not continually researching and learning about
safety. For example, the Heinrich Accident Triangle is still used in the professional
domain, even though it has repeatedly been disproven academically (Swuste, Gulijk et
al. 2014). Safety professionals believe that workers and line management are the
problem and safety improvement interventions should be targeted at these individuals,
through compliance with systems, behavioral programs, and safety training.
Safety professional’s promoting programs to influence worker behavior is
cheaper than modifications to plant or changes to the organization, and due to the
institutional and relational factors described in this paper, safety professionals may
not have sufficient influence to deliver more systemic improvements (Swuste, Gulijk
et al. 2014). Safety professionals resort to safety promotion activities and other low
impact strategies that do not create an impost on the organization's resources or
objectives, however, nor do they improve safety (Saari 1995).
Reiman and Pietikainen (2014) identified four dimensions of beliefs that
influence a safety professionals approach to their role as well as safety management;
organizational, information and uncertainty, human behavior, and safety models of
accident causation. The safety professional is seen as self-serving by measuring and
advising based on their career background, industry experience or best practice
instead of what the organization wants and needs (Galloway 2013). New scientific

31  
findings in the safety science literature are hard for practicing safety professionals to
handle, and they challenge their long-held beliefs about safety and their professional
role (Swuste, Gulijk et al. 2014).

4.2 Domain Safety Knowledge

Safety professionals require advanced domain safety knowledge acquired
through academic education and industry experience. The technical skills required by
safety professionals have been documented by the International Network of Safety
and Health Practitioner Organisations (INSHPO) and are based on the current role
responsibilities and hazards managed by safety professional’s (Pryor, Hale et al.
2015). Technical Skills enable safety professionals to advise their organization on
their known safety hazards as well as to establish effective safety management
processes.
Safety professionals need specific technical safety competencies due to the
organizational and regulatory complexity of safety management in modern
organizations (Wybo and Van Wassenhove 2015). Many line managers are
unfamiliar with the technical aspects of a safety professional’s role so rely on them to
have and maintain technical competence (Leemann 2002). The safety professional
role is not the place for on-the-job technical training (Leemann 2002).

4.3 Knowledge worker skills

Safety professionals can be considered knowledge workers that provide their
expertise to support organizational decision-making that solves problems and
improves safety. Their effectiveness relies on their skills in the search, retention, and
retrieval of safety information. Safety professionals should maintain currency and
accuracy of technical information, which includes the latest academic research and
practical industry application and innovation.
As safety professionals participate in and advise on a wide range of issues it
could be expected that they would rely heavily on external information, and keep up
to date with academic and technological advancements (Yang 2012). Yang (2012)
proposes that sourcing and critically evaluating information sources to solve daily
problems is a critical competency of a safety professional. Safety professionals
should apply rigorous standards of research to practical observations and conclusions

32  
(Metzger 2011, Yang 2012, Wybo and Van Wassenhove 2015). Leemann (2014)
proposed a mindset of mastery for safety professionals, to pursue the mastering of
safety skills and knowledge. He calculated that under the 10’000 hour’s rule for
mastery, the safety professional spending 4 hours a day, 250 days a year would take
ten years to obtain professional mastery. Safety professionals should be
knowledgeable of current developments in safety science, seek mastery in their
professional practices and be factual in advice, requests, and recommendations.
Safety professionals should say no to and stop everything that has no scientific
basis, and ruthlessly pursue priorities that do (Leemann 2014). Many of the
institutional and relational factors described in this paper that potentially limit the
effectiveness of safety professionals may be overcome with a scientific knowledge
worker approach to their role and the advice they provide organizations.
Safety professionals have historically, and still currently rely on old, erroneous
or incomplete information (Ryan 1989), out-dated beliefs (Walter 2012) and refer to
lay theories and folk models of human behavior (Reiman and Pietikainen 2014).
Dejoy (1993) found that the second lowest amount of safety professional time was
spent on the task of “conducting research studies into technical safety problems.”
Laduke (2011) requested safety professionals stop doing a number of things which
have no empirical basis and that undermine the profession's credibility: children's
safety poster contests, celebrating good injury management that lowers statistics,
comparing organisational incident rates to industry averages that ignore human
suffering, and ‘blame the worker’ mind control behavior based safety programs.
Safety professionals need to never stop learning (Metzger 2011, Pearson
2016). The safety professional is a knowledge worker and has to continuously keep
acquiring new knowledge, or they become obsolete (Manuele 2003). Hill (2006)
argues that knowledge is not information - information is what is in the newspaper,
knowledge is gained through formal education and its practical application. Safety
professionals should be able to cite research and best practice alongside their requests,
advice, and recommendations (Hansen 2012, Johnson 2014).

4.4 Risk Understanding

Safety professionals require an expert critical understanding of the nature of
risk – how it emerges, changes, and is understood, mitigated and monitored within

33  
organizations. This risk competence of safety professionals will ensure that their
advice, influence and the allocation of organizational resources is directed towards the
most important safety improvements for the organization. Safety professionals need
to be experts in risk, including both the technical assessment as well as the social
construction of risk (Saari 1995, Pearson 2016).
A safety professional needs to understand that risk and safety are not rational
processes from identification to evaluation, to prevention and overdone rationalism
may lead to totally false recommendations (Saari 1995). Saari (1995) suggests that
safety professionals should focus on the effectiveness of preventative measures and
not the size of the risk. Safety professional’s need to use their technical knowledge as
a basis for risk assessment as well as know what works socially within their
organization (Saari 1995).

5. Conclusion
Safety professional practice is influenced by twenty-five institutional,
relational and individual factors that combine and re-combine to determine the nature
and practice of their role within organizations. Thus the role of a safety professional
is socially and organisationally complex. Except for the study conducted by Hale and
Guldenmund (2006) with 5495 participants in 12 countries, there is a dearth of
reliable empirical research on safety professional practice within organizations. This
lack of research may be resulting in their reduced effectiveness at improving safety,
thus exposing the working population to a greater risk. This risk can be evidenced by
fatality rates in most of the developed world not declining over the past five years
(Borys 2015, Manuele 2016) which suggests there is an opportunity for new theories
and models of safety professional practice.

5.1 Practical Implications

The following practical implications provide a platform for safety
professionals and their organizations to review their current approaches.
1. Increasing goal based regulation and company officer liability
management have driven growth in safety compliance activity that
dominates the tasks of safety professionals. This type of ‘controlling’
activity (i.e. systems, reporting, investigation, and audit) negatively

34  
 impacts; relationships, the focus on safety risk, and the achievement of the
cost and production objectives of line management and the front-line
workforce.
2. There is a significant range of safety professional job titles and job
designs, which lead to confusing individual objectives and evaluations of
their performance. Organizations lack clarity on their safety goals more
broadly and the specific role of the safety professional in achieving them.
3. Safety professionals can influence the safety culture of their organization
through the way that they conduct themselves in open, engaging and
participative ways with line management and the front-line workforce.
4. Organizational safety structures and resourcing levels impact safety
performance measured through injury rates:
a. Internal resources are more effective than external resources (i.e.
consultants)
b. Interaction with senior management and participation in
management forums is necessary
c. Accident rates reduce up to a resourcing ratio of 1:50 (safety
professional to workforce) in operational environments (i.e.
construction) however what they do is equally important
d. Accident rates can double when site-based safety professionals
formally report to site management, as opposed to an off-site senior
safety professional, as acute production and schedule pressures can
compromise their role.
e. Accident rates reduce when additional responsibilities (i.e.
environment) are added to a safety professional’s role.
5. Centralized organizational safety structures increase role independence
and safety organization alignment, however, reduces operational
involvement in decision-making, the effectiveness of interpersonal
relationships and line-management influence.
6. Safety professional ‘whistleblowing’ to senior management within
organizations, damages relationships and is unlikely to lead to positively
influencing safety outcomes. Organizations should foster an environment
that values ‘challenge’ and the open raising of concerns enabling safety

35  
 professional to be supported and rewarded for expressing differing
viewpoints.
7. Safety professionals that align safety objectives and activities with other
organizational strategies, targets and business processes are effective at
stewarding and sustainably improving safety.
8. Safety professionals need to effectively communicate with, and support all
of the objectives of line management and the front-line workforce,
facilitating alignment between parties.
9. Safety professionals relying on authority (derived from the formal role,
senior management or safety systems) to influence safety is less effective
with both line management and the front-line workforce than alliance
based relational strategies.
10. Effective influencing requires safety professionals with; strong inter-
personal relationships built on credibility and trust, advanced
communication skills, and expert organizational knowledge and
operational context.
11. Safety professionals believe in traditional approaches to safety that is
focussed on improving; human behavior (of line management and the
front-line workforce) and organizational safety systems.
12. Safety professionals require expert level; domain safety knowledge,
knowledge worker skills and a critical understanding of the technical and
social nature of risk.

5.2 Further Research

Future research should focus on empirically understanding the complexity of
safety professional roles and practice. The review raises two specific questions, that
require further empirical investigation to answer, and the results of which would
enable the design of experimental research.
1. How do the role shaping factors identified in this review interrelate to
influence safety professional practice?
2. How can the effectiveness of safety professionals be evaluated?
In 1978, the Commission of the European Communities stated that safety
professionals must have: technical knowledge of the company's field of activity,

36  
analytical skills, the ability to synthesise and sell as personal qualities that facilitate
interpersonal relations, cooperation and teamwork, and a general knowledge of
psychology, sociology, and management (Brun and Loiselle 2002). This framework
is almost 40 years old and based on the relational and individual factors identified in
the literature since, contains a more complete model of the capabilities required by
safety professionals than more recent descriptions. It seems we have advanced little
in our understanding of safety professional practice in almost 40 years. Subsequent
partial models of ‘safety professionalism’ and ‘safety education’ may have resulted in
degradation of safety professional effectiveness over recent decades.

37  
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