Chris Goulart Shares the 2nd in a Series of Articles
MYTH #2 – Safety is a noble profession.
On to this installation of “101 Myths that Every Safety Professional Believes”. Like the first Myth, I anticipate there will be a lot of disagreement with this. When you ask the average safety person why they do their job (what makes them get out of bed every morning or some variant of that question) you will inevitably receive a minor dissertation about the importance of making sure our employees go home in the same condition they came to work. Another common answer is “I like to help people” or “I feel like I am making a difference”.
I am not about to question individual motivations or belief systems; however… What is it about safety that makes it a Noble Profession? If it is so noble why are safety persons generally thought of as inspectors and auditors at best and a “necessary evil” at worst?
Human beings are inherently competitive. It makes good evolutionary sense for an individual to want to do better than their neighbor. It exists around the notion of fitness… Basically, if I succeed better than my rival, my genes have a better chance of being passed on to the next generation. This natural competitiveness often translates into actions that are cold, calculating, and generally considered unfair. For example, who hasn’t seen someone in need of help, and just walked on by because we were too busy, didn’t want to get involved, or were just plain to lazy to help?
This competitiveness means that although helping one another should be an inherent characteristic, for many of us, it isn’t.
Let’s dig a little deeper. It is fair to say that most people want to do well in their careers because the rewards for doing so can be substantial. It is also fair to say that until recently few professionals entered the safety line of work on purpose. In fact, it is only VERY recent that Colleges and Universities have begun to offer advanced degrees in safety. However, you could have earned Doctoral degrees in truly noble fields such as Philosophy, Humanities, Ethics, Logic, and Sociology for hundreds of years.
Also, safety is not supported as a core value in society. Characteristics like risk taking, bucking the system, and questioning authority are much more highly valued than traits such as conforming to safety rules, taking the safe road, and following directions.
When you ask yourself, what do you think of the safety profession, can you answer that question honestly? If we are talking about a safety in a pure concept, then those who work in the field must constantly act above reproach. A noble profession requires the noblest of adherents. Therefore, it is reasonable to expect safety professionals to act safely personally at every opportunity. I can assure you that anyone who operates under this premise is either dangerous; delusional; or both.
So where does this leave us? Safety professionals fight a constant battle for respect and respectability. Society does not create conditions, values, or beliefs that will support the notion of safety being a noble trait and safety professionals themselves often violate the tenets of their own vocation.
If we, as safety professionals, are honest with ourselves, it is not the nobility of our profession that motivates us, but the actual opposite. We like to face adversity. We like to think of ourselves as the underdogs, fighting our way toward personal fulfillment of objectives that will ultimately save money for our companies. We want to exceed because we question our own value and self worth and feel the need to prove to the world that we matter.
I would submit that the greatest motivator for almost all safety professionals is not a desire to make the world a better place. Nor is it the often stated need to ensure that people go home as safe as they came to work. The greatest motivator for safety professionals is the need to prove we can do a good job, by any measure.
That is not to say that we don’t feel good when we make a difference. Actually, the feelings of internal positive reinforcement that we get when we do manage to help someone or make a substantial impact are key to keeping us motivated. This doesn’t speak to the nobility of the profession, but rather to a very selfish motivation that we like how we feel when we help someone. This can not be confused with pure altruism, but I am not sure the difference is all that important anyway.
Helping people feels good. Doing the right thing feels good. Maybe our profession is not as noble as we might think, but that may not be a bad thing either… remember what happened to the nobility in France in 1798.
Editor’s Note: Agree? Disagree? Let us know by leaving a comment.
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
To the author and other readers:
The assumptions in this article will make the content specific only for a particular group of people who agree with these particular assumptions.
1. Author’s assumption: People are competitive because they evolved to be.
My questions: What about those who believe we were created to be good and helpful? Also, what if there is an evolutionary process present in humans that promotes retention of a gene (assuming it came a mutation) that is protective of groups of humans, like bees and other social organisms are protective of their colonies?
2. Author’s assumption: Safety is not supported as a core value in society.
My questions: If safety is not a core value in society, why are there so many fire departments and ambulance companies, especially considering that firefighters, paramedics, and EMTs do not have high salaries in comparison to the average salary of all jobs? What about research dollars in safety and health? Why are billions spent? Furthermore, if safety is not valued in the society over, say, company profits, how is that a Republican President would have signed the OSH Act into law nearly 40 years ago?
3. Author’s assumption: Safety is not a noble profession and requires the noblest of adherents.
My questions: Why not? Isn’t it up to the individual who engages in the activity to define how noble something is or isn’t? Are we not who we chose to be? Whether noble or otherwise?
4. Author’s Assumption: Safety professionals fight a constant battle for respect and respectability.
My question: If safety professionals do not get respect, why do I know so many safety professionals who I fully respect and who I believe get great respect from others?
5. Author’s assumption: The greatest motivator for safety professionals is not a desire to make the world a better place, but to prove we can do a job.
My comments: The above statement makes me sad. I know a lot of safety professionals who have chosen the career in order to make the world a better place. This group includes me. I am an educator in the field of safety and health because I had a choice between continuing to design weapon systems for the government or go into education and teach others about safety. I chose the latter because I wanted to make the world a better place. There are many others who also want to legitimately make a positive difference in others’ lives.
I hope you will reconsider your statements and chose a pathway that is clearer for you.
sincerely,
Aaron Bird
Author’s Response
Dr. Bird,
Thank you for your excellent response and critique of the article. I am very glad that you took the time to provide some insightful and valuable counterpoints to the arguments I made in the article.
I think you are correct in a number of the criticisms you provide and there are other statements you make that cause me to still hold to my original thoughts.
Point 1. Social insects act cooperatively because they are identical genetic copies of one another. If the same species of bee or ant comes into contact with other members of the same species who are not from the same hive or nest, they immediately fight to the death. This behavior is well documented, but I am glad to say that humans do exist on a much higher plane. It is very true that humans do tend to act altruistically when they get a chance, but the motivation for this can be traced to a myriad of other evolutionary and social strategies.
Point 2) Although some entities do exist in society that clearly prioritize safety it is not as highly regarded as institutions that forge profit or political agendas. As you correctly cite, paramedics, police, fire fighters, and other governmental safety employees are not compensated with income commensurate with thier duties. Fire departments in small communities generally rely on the volunteer activities of citizens rather than paying professionals. What does this really say about the value placed on safety… leave it to volunteers or pay professionals?
The general point that I was trying to make is that activities like risk taking and pushing the envelope are more socially acceptable than activities like following safety standards and being safe. Thus it is more “noble” to engage in socially supported activities than the safe and conservative ones.
Point 3 is excellent and completely accepted. No counterpoint or argument from me.
Point 4 is also well taken. Safety professionals do respect one another, this is undeniably true. But our pofession has almost universally fought for credibility and attention when it comes to other competiting interests in business. I have experienced a bit of “cocktail-party-envy” when asked about my profession, especially if I go after a person who has a REALLY interesting job.
Point 5 was the one that I was expecting would get the most response, and likely the most negative reaction. My intention with this topic was to challenge the common assumption that persons maintain careers in the field of safety for completely altruistic reasons.
I am sorry that my perspective makes you feel sad and believe me, it is not intended to serve as a personal slight against anyone, or to question individual motivations. It IS intended to have us take a hard look at our profession and ask just what is it that motivates us? I still believe that the desire to succeed against challenging circumstances is one of the greatest motivators of all. The safety profession provides much opportunity to stive to do the right thing, especially when it is difficult to do.
Again, Dr. Bird, thank you for your comments to the article. The points you make clearly present some differences of opinion. I respect your perspective and am glad to have read your thoughts.
Chris Goulart
Chris: Tsk, tsk…I must jump on you comment regarding volunteer vs. career fire departments, specifically: “Fire departments in small communities generally rely on the volunteer activities of citizens rather than paying professionals. What does this really say about the value placed on safety… leave it to volunteers or pay professionals?”
Perhaps I can call this “Fire Department Myth #1?! (lol)
An important point that you and all safety professsionals should know is that a fire department cannot be evaluated purely based on whether it it career, paid-on-call, volunteer. This is an extremely common mistake of safety, insurance and other professionals as well as the public at large. Similarly, a community’s value on safety cannot be rated by whether they fund full time or on call staff, but rather on more objective evaluation criteria, such as ISO ratings, rescue/EMS capabilities, technical capabilites, water supply/shuttle capabilities, average staffing, response times, technical rescue (high angle/trench/confined space) capabilities, Automatic Mutual Aid (AMA) agreements, communications (Including 800 MhZ and centralized dispatch), fire inspection, public education, etc, etc, etc.
It is extremely important to also understand that each firefighter in the State of Michigan, regardless of career, paid on call or volunteer status, must complete the same level of training (at a minimum, Firefighter 1 and 2 and Haz Mat Operations Level. ) Most also complete some form of emergency medical training, such as MFR, EMT, Specialist or Paramedic and a myriad of other pre-response and continuing education training. It is truly a myth to think someone can walk into a fire department, volunteer, and then immediately begin responding. In my department, it is usually well over a year until that can happen.
If I sound a bit sensitive, it is only because I am, as I have spent much of my “dual career” trying to educate safety professionals in this topic. Very good or not so good fire departments can be “pigeoned holed” as amatuers or professionals merely based on pay/career status.
A more fatal flaw, in my opinion, is when communities choose to replace some form of on call or combination department in lieu of an all career staffing model, often times at a dramatically diminished level of overall staffing. The bottom line is that for many fire department responses, such as medical emergencies, non-extrication car accidents, fire alarms, odor investigations (bells and smells), car fires or dumpster fires, that a single company response with 2-5 trained individuals will suffice. But any type of multi company incident, including residential structure fires, can necessitate up to 20 personnel on the 1st alarm response. These realities are why many medium sized communities utilize some sort of a “combination” system of in station staffed and on call personnel.
Fire department reality #1 – You don’t need a lot of people a lot of the time(generally), but when you need a lot of people, you need them RIGHT NOW. Doing otherwise potentially jeopordizes the public and firefighter safety.
I could go on and on, but I will leave you with the following thought. Michigan is fortunate to have over 1000 fire departments of all shapes and sizes and over 30,000 firefighters of all levels of career, volunteer, paid 0n call and related statuses. Despite the poor economy in the state, the demand for service in this sector of public safety continues to increase. (In my department, at a rate of increase of 10% per year) I ask each of you, as safety professionals, to learn about and support your local fire department in any way you can.