Michael Holland remembers his interactions with the safety director at his former employer, a commercial construction company.
“He just basically audited us, sent pictures to the boss and got us in trouble,” Holland says. “He was so focused on avoiding a citation process that he didn’t really make safety relatable.”
This continued for a few years until Holland’s boss approached him with a question: The safety director is leaving. Would he like to move into that role?
“I’m like, wow, so you’re asking the guy who hated the safety professional to become a safety professional,” Holland recalls.
But he was intrigued. Holland asked his boss what he would need to make the transition from superintendent to safety. His boss said to figure it out, and he would pay for whatever was needed. That’s how, after some research, Holland decided to go to college at the age of 52. Now, he’s expected to graduate with his master’s this summer and is a CSP and an area safety leader at Clark Construction Company.
Holland’s not alone. Safety is a second career for many people, and they find their way to safety from several different avenues.
Those varied backgrounds and experiences offer great advantages for the safety profession, but they can also pose challenges when it comes to ensuring everyone has adequate training and the knowledge they need to be effective safety leaders at their organizations.
Add to that the fact that safety professionals are not required to obtain any kind of licensure or training, and that creates a vast landscape for professionals and employers alike to navigate.
The Safety Landscape
EHS Today sought to know more about people’s experiences with safety training, formal education and leadership, so we conducted a survey. Answers vary, but some themes and values do emerge.
We asked how respondents got started in safety:
- 34% said they moved into safety after working at a plant, jobsite or shop floor;
- 22% studied occupational health and safety, industrial hygiene or a similar program in college;
- 17% left another unrelated field to work in safety;
- 4% entered safety after their military service; and
- 23% chose other.
Of those who chose “other,” one respondent said they were one day asked by the CEO to develop a safety plan while another said they got into safety after a worksite fatality.
A majority of respondents (70%) earned at least a bachelor’s degree from college, but they’re divided on advanced certifications in safety; 44% hold them, 49% don’t and the remaining 7% had certifications but let theirs expire.
However, a majority (84%) agree that having formal training and/or education has helped them in their safety career. What’s more, 65% said that formal training and/or education is necessary to be an effective leader.
When it comes to education and training, respondents were divided on what has been the most helpful to them on their safety journey:
- 40% said specific safety training, such as through a safety association;
- 22% said on-the-job training, such as from colleagues or microlearning;
- 16% said OSHA training;
- 15% said formal degree program, such as a university; and
- 6% said periodic training from your employer.
One respondent commented that formal training was helpful because “it allowed me to make connections to people that have helped build my knowledge. I think that is the most crucial thing in the safety industry. There is too much out there to know it all. The contacts you make during your formal training become the people you reach out to when you have questions and vice versa.”
Another respondent said that while they don’t think a bachelor’s degree is necessary, they do believe that some formal training, either through OSHA or a safety organization, is essential when presenting to management. They said: “Your challenge is to learn the language of the C-suite and be able to translate our information into something meaningful that can help drive change.”
Those are some of the main reasons people join the American Society of Safety Professionals (ASSP), says Pam Walaski, CSP, FASSP, president of ASSP and owner of RiverLure OSHA Services.
“Our members enter the profession from lots of different paths,” Walaski says, adding that she, too, took a circuitous path to safety.
The Role of Formal Education
Walaski has undergraduate and graduate and graduate degrees in social work and spent nearly 14 years in the field before going back to school. After graduating with her second bachelor’s degree in environmental protection science, Walaski was working for a consulting company that asked her to take care of the safety program. She knew nothing about safety, but her supervisors thought she could learn fast. That's when she first got involved with ASSP, and she's been an ASSP trainer for many years.
A survey of ASSP’s 35,000 global membership found that 61% of members have a reported certification or credential and that professional development and education is a top reason why people join the association.
“I think [our diversity] is a benefit in some ways because it [makes safety] open to a lot of different people, but it’s a challenge that the profession faces,” she says. “Who are we and how do we define ourselves?
“Somebody who maybe is trained as an HR professional may suddenly find themselves responsible for safety in their organization. You wouldn’t see that in other, more clearly defined professions like medicine. You wouldn’t see someone who is not a doctor examining patients in a clinic. But I could call myself a safety professional without having a degree or any experience, and there are a number of folks who find that to be very troubling.”
Walaski teaches undergraduate and graduate students as adjunct instructor at four different universities, and the degree programs are all called something different. There isn’t one degree or field of study for safety, and programs can be housed in different departments at a university, which will influence the curriculum. For example, some safety programs are part of a College of Public Health while others might be in the College of Engineering.
Sammy Davis, CSP, GrIOSH, vice president of safety and security for Papa John’s International, earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in safety. In December 2023, he earned his doctorate in organizational leadership. Davis says his formal education taught him technical skills, but it also taught him how to think through his decisions.
“The formal education piece may teach you the fundamentals, but you have to learn that safety is not always a black and white transaction. There’s a lot of grey areas, and if you don’t have that formal education, you’ll make poor decisions—and those poor decisions are typically what get companies in trouble.”
Davis is also an adjunct instructor, and he says he likes sharing what he’s learned in his 35 years as a safety professional, especially the business aspect. It’s not essential to know what a profit and loss statement is as an entry-level safety professional, but he says it becomes important if
someone wants to move into a managerial role.
“Safety has gotten so complex that you need that true professional who’s got not only the experience but has the education as well to know where to start,” he says.
The Benefits of Credentials
Katherine Mendoza, senior director of workplace programs at the National Safety Council (NSC) and EHS director, says that safety professionals are sometimes required by their organization or employer to complete a curriculum and testing program as well as maintain any continuing education requirements.
“Having a credentialing process within the profession has had an overwhelmingly positive impact on the field and the credibility of individuals in safety positions,” Mendoza says. “It sets a standard for knowledge and ensures you have the right people with the right competencies in the right positions.”
Holland says credentials can also be important for clients because they want to control risk at the jobsite. He has worked in sophisticated environments for the likes of Amazon, Google and Gilead Sciences. He says clients like those want to see that the area safety director has a CSP.
“I think there’s a comfort level because they have relied on education [themselves in their careers],” he says. “You may not be motivated to get a CSP, but it also makes you less hirable if a client requires your company to have a CSP there.”
Davis says that everyone on his team at Papa John’s either has a credential or is working on a credential, such as CSP. He tells his team that credentials are an important signal that someone is focused on their own development and that they have mastered those skills.
He knows firsthand how credentials can lead to new opportunities, too. Davis says that recruiters and human resources will often scour directories to find qualified job candidates, especially for upper-management positions. Ten years ago, he got a call from a recruiter specifically seeking someone with safety credentials.
“That’s why I'm at Papa John’s,” he says.
