What You Need to Know to Thrive as a New Occupational Health and Safety Professional!

If you just wrapped up your occupational health and safety course, even if you’ve now joined the board of Canadian registered safety professionals, launching a new career can seem daunting. With the risks to know, hazards to assess, workers to educate and fellow colleagues to navigate, you could likely use some insights and tips on how to bring is all together quickly.

This is the blog for you.

Occupational health and safety training courses offer a foundation and wealth of knowledge, but to launch a new career and thrive, you need some advice from those who’ve gone before.

Tips to Succeed as an Occupational Health and Safety Newbie

Be an Avid Observer

Being keenly observant, listening intently, asking questions, these skills all allow you to learn, assess and advise with insight. Before you act you want to be aware. Every person in the workplace plays a vital role; learn about them. Workers have valuable perspectives that can empower you to make better decisions and be of greater support; listen to them. Gathering is the first step to being exceptional within your role and is a powerful way to build a reputation as someone people can talk to and trust to have their best interests at heart.

Recognize the Culture, and Honour It

Being new on the job means you have to work extra hard to build trust. This begins with understanding an organization’s culture and the teams’ attitudes and understandings around safety. Every culture is unique and delicate. If you want to have an impact, you have to honour what is before you start to make changes for what can be. Once you’ve shown that you support where the team is, you can make strategic choices over time for helping them take their systems to new levels of health and safety. Perception surveys are a great way to get this ball rolling.

Build Solid Relationships

Your effectiveness to contribute to a company is dependent on people and their ability to see you as an ally and an expert. Focus on building relationships with key decision-makers, who will fund and support your programs and the process, and with frontline workers and managers who will give you the inside track. Show up, not just when there is an accident or need, but regularly. Attend meetings, be seen, establish relationships before there is a need and then the team will recognize that you do indeed care. And remember, don’t take too much of their time when they need to be on the job, and offer them a way to reach you and encourage them to connect.

Know the Risks, Hazards, and Standards

Your ability to research the risks and potential hazards that are present, allows you to build an effective safety management framework and targeted programs. Your keen understanding of the Occupational Health and Safety Act (OHSA) standards will allow you to guide appropriately and bolster your reputation as a professional they can count on. We created a powerful blog to precisely support your learning in this area. The Occupational Health and Safety Act: What You Need to Know!

Hone in on Progress, Not Perfection

Benchmarking where things began, and keeping tabs on how things develop, will help you and the team see the incremental shifts that lead to big developments. It isn’t about perfecting; it’s about progressing, learning, applying and celebrating advancements. Creating an ongoing and dynamic training program to educate the workforce as risks, hazards and standards change, and perpetually requesting team input, will ensure all are always in the know and evolving. Don’t forget to offer this courtesy of focus to yourself as well. Remember that you will always be learning on the job and as long as you yourself are focused on process rather than perfection, you’ll authentically set the tone for the team.
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After finishing your workplace health and safety course, and initially entering into the OHS field may feel challenging but these guidelines will help you survive at first, and then thrive, as you settle into the vital role you’ll play.

If you’re still considering whether you should study occupational health safety or enrol in online safety training courses, you can always take our “Medical Professional Career Discovery Quiz”.

But if these tips had you envisioning a future in this thriving field, you can learn more about an Occupational Health & Safety career and then book a virtual appointment with our Admissions team. We’re here to help you every step along the way.

Quick Links to Fuel Your Success!

We want to make sure you have what you need to succeed! Check out these reference links:

• Occupation Health & Safety program – Anderson College
• Highlighting Occupational Health & Safety – Anderson Blog
• The Occupational Health and Safety Act: What You Need to Know! – Anderson Blog
• Professional Opportunities Await – for OHS Graduates