Health & Safety like PR seeks professional status

The Wardman Wire publishes a response to an earlier blog post from Director of Communications, Ruth Doyle, at the Institution of Occupational Health and Safety.

This is an interesting example of a pro-active response to blogging and addressing the issues raised in a post and discussion comments.

I also enjoyed Ruth’s reflections on the way in which the media represents health and safety.  Even more than this, she raises some interesting points about professional regulation, which relate to discussions on the same topic in Public Relations.

As the law currently stands, anyone, with no qualifications or experience whatsoever, can call themselves a health and safety adviser, or make decisions in the name of health and safety. The law requires all organisations to make sure they get “competent” advice on the subject, but gives no specific guidelines on what ”competence” is or looks like. The Health and Safety Executive (HSE), as the enforcer, offers no clear guidance either.

The organisation launched a campaign in May highlighting the importance of professional advice – see http://www.iosh.co.uk/files/getthebest/Getthebest.pdf

Could we learn from this campaign which demands government and other stakeholders to:

1. Clearly define ‘competence’ in health and safety
2. Recognise and promote the specific national standards, linked to the right levels of health and safety qualification, experience and skill, for different sizes and types of business
3. Make providing health and safety advice a legally regulated profession
4. Turn directors’ health and safety responsibilities into explicit legal duties
5. Make public reporting on health and safety mandatory for medium and large organisations
6. Include health and safety in vocational, professional and business curricula

If we replace “health and safety” with public relations do we have the same needs? 

We can certainly recognise the elements of the campaign that promote continuing professional development, encourage employers and others to demand the best health and safety professionals for the job and encourage the media to get the best health and safety comment for their stories.

I also identified with Matt Wardman’s initial comment that

Even the Chief Executive of a County Council needs – if he is giving Health and Safety Advice outside his competence – a metaphorical blowtorch holding to his cojones. How many Health and Safety professionals would do it?

There seem lots of parallels here and if this makes sense for health and safety counsel, shouldn’t the same considerations apply for the profession and practice of PR too?