Have you ever thought of “why am I doing this thankless job of being a Safety Professional”? If so, maybe we are looking at the reasons for being a Safety Professional all wrong.
In the Christmas movie titled “It’s a Wonderful Life” (1946), the main character George Bailey in a period of self-doubt, wishes he was never born to which a guardian angel named Clarence grants his request. Clarence then takes George to see what life in Georges hometown would have been like if George was not born. At one point in the movie, the guardian angel Clarence makes a statement to George, “Strange, isn’t it? Each man’s life touches so many other lives. When he isn’t around he leaves an awful hole, doesn’t he?”
Clarence, the guardian angel, showed George Bailey some examples of how George touched the life of many different people without knowing how. Such as if George had not rescued his younger brother from a frozen pond in which his brother had fallen, his brother would not have gone on to become a hero pilot in WW1. Another example is if George had not recognized that the local pharmacist had mistakenly placed a poison in a prescription bottle instead of the correct medication the pharmacist would become the town drunk because he was in jail and lost his pharmacy. Yet another example is if George had gone to college instead of reluctantly staying home to manage the local family-owned savings and loan, the towns people would be living in slum apartments owned by the greedy town banker instead of in houses that local towns people could afford to own.
Have you ever felt that as a Safety Professional, you do not receive any thanks for what you do every day? Safety seems to be a drain on other people’s time, takes company budget and does not contribute to the company profits, adds time and obstacles to tasks that workers are trying to complete, and is viewed by many as a negative and not a positive. Are you really making a difference?
I suggest thinking of it in a different way. What would the workplace be like or the home life of workers be like if you, the Safety Professional, were not there doing your job every day?
While there is no way to know exactly, think about the guardian angel’s quote about how each person’s life touches so many other peoples’ lives without knowing how that “touch” affected people.
If you had not been there at the right time and right place to remind a worker to tighten up the fall harness or to tie off, would that worker had done so? Maybe or maybe not. What if that worker would have fallen while not being tied off? Would that worker had been injured and if so how bad? If it was bad enough for the worker to be taken to the emergency room by an ambulance, who from work will go to the hospital with him? Who at the company is going to call the family of the injured worker telling them they need to go to the hospital because their family member was injured at work? Based on the severity of the injury, how will that effect his family members? Who is going to do the tasks (coach the soccer team, run the kids to various activities, cook the meals, mow the lawn, shovel the sidewalk, help the kids with homework, put the kids to bed, what about the planned family vacation, etc.) that the injured worker usually does while the injured worker recuperates? Will the partner of the injured worker need to get a job or a second job to make up for lost income and additional bills associated with the injury rehabilitation that is not covered by workers’ comp insurance? If the treatment for the injury and the rehabilitation from the injury does not go as the injured worker had planned and it takes longer than expected or the injury does not heal exactly as expected returning the worker to full health and work, how does that affect the attitude and mental well-being of the injured worker and their family? How does that affect the morale of the company employees?
So, by you being there as a Safety Professional doing your job every day, you have the potential to touch and significantly impact the lives of the workers, their family, and their friends, just by doing your job. We may never now specifically how we touched and impacted the lives of the workers, their family and friends, or coworkers by doing things like coaching a supervisor on how to better review a JSA at the beginning of the shift with their workers, or train workers on the proper seal-check when using a respirator, or with just by your presence in the workplace reminding workers to work safely doing the things that you explained to them when you were training them.
We work diligently to prevent injuries from occurring. Many of us take an injury to a worker personally thinking that we could have done more, as a Safety Professional, to prevent the injury. We don’t look at the many work hours and tasks that workers do in which workers are not injured. This is how we have touched and impacted the lives of the workers, their family and friends, and coworkers.
So, the next time you are feeling like being a Safety Professional is a thankless job or is it really affecting anything that our workers are doing, know that we are definitely affecting the lives of our coworkers by doing the job that we feel is more of a calling instead of as just a job.
Remember the words of the guardian angel Clarence in the movie, “Each man’s life touches so many other lives.” We can take assurance in knowing that we do positively affect each workers’ life that we touch as well as extending this touch into the lives of the workers’ family and friends.
A fun fact: Jimmy Stewart was born on May 20, 1908, in Indiana, PA.
For more information and/or assistance, contact:
Wayne Vanderhoof CSP, CIT
Sr. Consultant/President
RJR Safety Inc.