Why I Became a Safety Professional - And Why I Made a Career Out of It

Published: July 4, 2018

Why I Became a Safety Professional – And Why I Made a Career Out of It

By: Kenny Young, CSP, ARM, AINS, CEAS

Most safety professionals I know didn’t become safety professionals through the “normal” career path. As a consultant for much of my career I’ve met hundreds, if not over 1,000, people that I would consider safety professionals in one way, shape, or form. What I’ve come to realize is that many of us didn’t choose this path, but the path chose us.

There are the HR professionals at small to mid-sized manufacturing locations that were tasked with the secondary hat of “safety coordinator.” They have looked to me as a third party to improve their technical skills of understanding lockout/tagout, machine guarding, ergonomics etc. so they can develop better training programs for their teams. There are the small business owners that know safety is important but must sift through the good and bad advice of what is and is not a true OSHA regulation. You have the skilled trades-people that started on the safety committee, were the most experienced aerial lift operator becoming the company’s trainer, were tasked to give toolbox talks, became the OSHA Outreach Trainer for their organization, and ultimately fell in love with the role so they took online classes to get their safety degree from a school like Columbia Southern. That’s not to say there aren’t great safety professionals who obtained their degree in safety from 18 – 22 years old who knew exactly what they wanted out of a career, but these degrees weren’t as prevalent as they are today.

All these safety professionals bring a unique background and skill set to the table and I’ve enjoyed helping every one. But that’s not why I got into safety. I didn’t have a tragic story or immense feeling of helping people protect their life and limbs when I started. I got my bachelor’s degree in Finance with an Insurance Concentration and immediately took a position as a claims adjuster. When I was 17 I got into a car accident and the insurance company fought my father and me over the claim, which left me without a car for seven months. My plan was to learn as much as I could about the insurance industry and become a lawyer to stand up against them. As an adjuster I was repaying people to fix their homes after fires, relocating them to temporary housing, cutting checks so parents could clothe their children for school after a water loss destroyed everything, and overall felt like I was helping people. This made me fall in love with the insurance industry and I crossed over enemy lines.

However, I wanted to stop the problems before I started. I was offered a position as a Risk Consultant for an insurance carrier and given the opportunity to do just that. But at the age of 23 I saw the pay raise I was going to get and that probably trumped all else. Let’s be honest, safety pays pretty well. I had some purpose, but it wasn’t my driving force. Because of my property adjuster background, I really tried to focus on fire prevention so business owners could stay up and running. The stats don’t look good for businesses to restart after a catastrophic event. I did safety training that TOLD employees how to be safe and believed managers when they blamed actions that caused injuries on employees because safety is common sense right? As I spent time reviewing claims I noticed a pattern. More than half the worker’s compensation claims were perceived by companies as “fraudulent,” “he should’ve known better,” or “she wasn’t hurt that bad.” I dug deep into understanding the claims process because deep down this wasn’t going to be my career. I became frustrated with businesses and law school was back in my sights to get people what they deserved.

But why couldn’t I help by being more proactive? My perspective started to change. I recalibrated my reasoning for being in safety. I have a mother that has spent most her life in manual labor jobs barely making above minimum wage. She told me about the machines that always caught fire but there were never fire extinguishers around. Employees I interviewed had no idea about the health hazards involved in the chemicals they used. Managers would tell me that lifting 80 lbs. consistently throughout the day was “just part of the job” and someone’s back going out in their 40s was just part of the job. There were also the statements of “if OSHA wants to find something wrong they will.” In my head I was thinking, “that may be true, but you have two repeat violations and four serious ones and that’s just lack of respect for your employees.” I started believing more and more that workers needed help.

In a lot of cases it wasn’t because the businesses were managed by bad people, but it was lack of understanding what can injure a person and in other cases a lack of empathy. Occupational safety and health became my mission and I decided to choose it as my career. People like my mom will do anything their leadership asks of them no matter how much it hurts because they need the paycheck. And it’s my job every day to make sure that leaders understand that and provide a work environment where pain isn’t brought home with the paycheck. A few years into being a safety professional I started every week off by reviewing OSHA’s fatality/catastrophe report so I wouldn’t forget that.

Now, almost 11 years into being a safety professional I’ve dedicated myself to learning and teaching as many aspects of safety as I can. I really don’t have hobbies and can truly say that my career is my life without any regrets. The internet browser on my phone always has some research paper up on ergonomics, research on the links of substance abuse and safety, OSHA interpretation letters, the OSHA standards, or any piece of information I can get my hands on. As I’m studying for my MBA I try to link my studies of organizational behavior, economics, leadership, and marketing to safety because they all apply once you take the time to think it through. I pride myself as an academic that can apply knowledge in the real world. Safety chose me as a career and I’ve made it into my life’s mission to change the status quo of how we handle it because no one deserves to be treated like just a form of labor. We need to protect people as if they are our family, understand what can harm them, and do everything in our power to provide some sort of protection. That is what should be considered common sense. Whatever your path was or is going to be to join the profession; welcome to the team.