Safety Sucks! The Manifesto

Book excerpt: The professional practice of occupational safety and health has within it the ability to help and the capacity to harm. The safety practitioner, the one that wields this doubled-edged sword, holds within their hands a disease and a cure. Unfortunately, the disease seems systemic and the cure far, far away. Our dated and flawed approaches to worker safety have left much to be desired, both within our own ranks and the companies that we serve. In this second book of the Safety Sucks! series, we will discuss where the "sucks" of the safety profession stem from and will offer some ideas on how we can make them, at the very least, suck less. We will explore the underlying beliefs that organizations, industries, and safety professionals hold about safety, and how these beliefs impact the role of the practitioner. We will discuss how we can create a more impactful role for the safety practitioner, how the practitioner can be more effective in their day-to-day job, and the things that we as safety practitioners should be focusing on.