Dusty Roach
Welcome to everyone’s favorite topic in the oilfield: Safety. Said no one ever, lol. It’s easy to make jokes about safety to a non-sensitive safety guy such as myself. However, I have known some safety professionals that had to fill out an incident report for “hurt feelings.” Fortunately, they were all non-recordable.
I am going to address a few issues, all regarding change. Like most of you have heard the old saying, no one likes “change” except a baby. Change is inevitable. Politics, circumstances, owners of companies, and even the oil patch. It is a given that change is necessary in our industry, and change is associated with progress in best case scenarios. The reason our industry has been so resilient over the last century is it is directly associated with our ability to stay up with the times and research, and/or continually strive for better ways, innovation, and processes. Change is inevitable for safety as well.
Safety does studies and research to continuously improve methods, procedures, and research itself. The innate desire to improve, regardless of the motivation, is always evolving. I’ve never run across a true safety professional that misrepresented experience, training, or capabilities. Certainly, there may be some out there, but those can be captured by thorough hiring practices.
The most common area of concern is actual training and certifications of the individual. Formal training is key on every front. However, there are some students of safety that can obtain every training certification there is, yet are unable to relate or convey the importance of safety to anyone in the field. That is usually the pitfall of newbies. They may be excellent students and have a propensity and proclivity to take and give tests to achieve certification, but if they are unable to effectively communicate on all levels of the hierarchy or to the people in the field, it is all for naught. Conversely, if the individual has the gift of gab, but knows little of the regulations, that is also a pitfall to be leery about.
There are several types of safety personnel. The knowledge required is regulated and mandatory. The ability to convey the information and its applications to the intended audience is paramount. If they are unable to motivate and encourage, then the battle for buy-in is lost.
The gist of this conversation is, if you are looking for a New Safety professional, to replace an outgoing safety professional there are key elements to look for in the replacement. If your safety man was great, good, or adequate, before the search for replacement, there are things to consider before hiring. Understand that there are numerous types of safety personnel. Be clear on what you are looking for prior to hiring.
- Are you looking for a safety person that measures up to the one you had? Or exceeds?
2. Are you looking for a certain quality that the previous safety person did not have?
3. Is the focus on documentation?
4. Is the focus on visibility in the field and ability to communicate to the people in the field?
5. Are you more interested in thorough training? Or are you going to farm out training?
6. What certifications do you require?
7. Do you require good communication skills?
8. Will you require that person to do clerical work, spreadsheets, safety bulletins etc.? Filing? Or administrative support?
9. To whom do they report?
And how much do you really want them to know about what goes on in the field and be able to impart, motivate and strive to reach zero accidents? How much authority will they have? If any?
Now let’s say you run across the consummate candidate that can balance a field presence and knows the regulations inside and out, degreed (preferably) or not degreed and has years of successful results. This is the kind of individual you have been looking for and he/she checks every box you have dreamed of for the ideal candidate. This candidate will not come at a cheap price. Normally these candidates are looking to improve their situation by salary, benefits, and the possibility of promotion. This is the ideal candidate, but more than likely you will pay up front without the guarantee of a contract. Most companies are reluctant and reticent to make such an investment.
Additionally, there are job-jumping safety personnel that make moves to other companies to the highest bidder, not exclusive to safety or to operations. What person would not job-jump for an increase of pay? Loyalty, regretfully, is not as common as it used to be.
Granted, not everyone falls into any, or all of, these categories. The purpose of this article is to know the pitfalls when hiring a safety person and what their motivation for job seeking is to decrease turnover. If you are constantly going through safety personnel, it could also be because they are unwilling or unable to fudge the numbers. The old school safety personnel—so often sticklers for hard, cold facts—are not as prevalent as back in the old days. Good, bad, or indifferent, the numbers are the numbers. Honesty and integrity are key for safety personnel. It can cost you more by paying less. It is the old adage: you get what you pay for.
I have found in our profession that the majority of safety professionals are integral. Due diligence and in-depth background checks are key, but not always foolproof. Like safety, Human Resources fall to the same obstacles as safety: garbage in usually equates to garbage out. When checking references, I have found that some companies give good referrals just to avoid paying unemployment. As difficult as it sounds, it is true. Granted, it’s the exception, not the rule.
When looking for a safety person, most companies try to keep the salary in check. Remember, you usually get what you pay for. Be diligent when looking for a person in Safety. My emphasis in hiring is the barometer of how much they care! “I don’t care how much a man knows, until I know how much they care.” —Teddy Roosevelt.
Be diligent in hiring a safety professional. Lastly, it is not how many hits you have in baseball that counts. It is how many times you reach home safely that matters. —Dusty
Dusty Roach is a safety professional based in Midland. He is also a public speaker on subjects of leadership and safety, and he maintains a personal website at dustyroach.com.