The work of safety practitioners: Work context and activity profile

In this article, the term front-line safety practitioners refers to the var ious company members who regularly and directly intervene in the workplace with respect to health and safety within organizations. This definition cov ers both employer and worker representatives, whether or not they have unde rgone training recognized by an occupational health and safety agency. (Wor k inspectors, specialized consultants and physicians are here excluded from the category of front-line safety practitioners.) Today's front-line safety practitioners working within companies must be ad aptable because they face a constantly evolving work environment and increa sed complexity in their occupational health and safety work. We observe two concomitant phenomena within companies: an increase in the number of occup ational health and safety interveners (foremen, engineers, managers, employ ees) and increased expertise in prevention. Although the safety practitione r presumably plays an essential role in this tension between generalization and specialization, little is known about its inherent functions and respo nsibilities. Based on the literature addressing safety practitioners' work, their activi ties and the work sites where they operate, we have identified three major spheres where the activities identified in prevention can be linked. Preven tive initiatives can be directed toward the human, technical and organizati onal dimensions of work. Moreover, the scope of safety practitioners' activ ities spans different levels. Sometimes safety practitioners are directly i nvolved in operational activities (e.g., risk inspection, correction of tec hnical failures) whereas at other times they intervene on a much more strat egic level (e.g., company policies, occupational health and safety manageme nt system). This article presents the results of a survey conducted among safety practi tioners representing employers (n = 111) and safety practitioners represent ing employees (n = 134), with the objective of developing a better understa nding of their respective roles and functions within the companies concerne d. The analysis of these results provides a means by which to examine the w ork context of safety practitioners and highlight its main characteristics. The most significant conclusion that may be drawn from our study is that th ere is no one right way to conduct preventive interventions. On the contrar y, a wide range of intervention strategies results from organizational cond itions, interpersonal relations and the characteristic traits of safety pra ctitioners themselves. Implementation of prevention measures is thus a comp lex issue that becomes incorporated into safety practitioners' relations wi th the various company members. Based on the responses of employer and worker safety practitioners, we are also able to conclude that intervention priorities are not perceived in the same way. Employer-appointed safety practitioners give priority to the ind ividual and his or her work behaviour and methods. Worker-appointed safety practitioners, however, adopt a more union-oriented view, assigning top pri ority to having management take action and to administering operational pol icies in occupational health and safety. The findings also show that work is to an extent divided up between the emp loyers' representatives, whose initiatives are primarily oriented toward th e organizational level, and the employees' representatives, whose actions a re focused on the technical level. Upon closer analysis, we note that nearl y one out of two employer-appointed safety practitioners (48.6%) regularly intervenes at the organizational level. A trend can be observed whereby the safety practitioner emerges as a member whose role as coach, rather than s olely as an agent of prevention, becomes increasingly significant. Among sa fety practitioners named by workers, the intervention profile that stands o ut (44.8% of cases) is the one termed "technical/operational." As safety pr actitioners who operate in the field, they clearly possess and apply an exp ertise of their own, which most certainly enables them to conduct preventio n interventions at the source of risks. Very few studies address what the work of safety practitioners actually ent ails. Our research provides a detailed portrait of the intervention practic es and the roles of safety practitioners representing the employer and thos e representing workers.