Canadian Occupational Safety

10 Canadian Occupational Safety www.cos-mag.com Credentials versus competence Does obtaining a designation make you adequately qualifi ed? W hat is the most important leading indic ator of capabilit y, competence and career success in the fi eld of occupational health and safety? Is it a formal university education? Is it the number of years of fi eld experience? Is it having a particular credential? Or is it something else? Ask these questions at a reception of safety practitioners and you'll get a fi restorm of opinions and positions on the topic. Credentials matter. There are thousands of credentialled safety professionals in Canada. Cer ti- fi ed safety professionals complete a course of study, pass a written exami- nation and are required to undertake a never-ending program of con- tinuous professional development. Credentials represent commitment and follow-through; a goal that was set and achieved. That stamp of approval with third-party vali- dation is without equal as a means of offi cially recognizing a specifi c level of professionalism. And profes- sionalism is exactly what the safety profession needs. Competence is very much about having the necessary skill or knowl- edge to do something successfully. The typical regulator y definition of competence is being "adequately qualifi ed, suitably trained and with suffi cient experience to safely per- form work without supervision or with only a minimal degree of super- vision." In effect, this means to have the knowledge, skills and abilities to do the work anticipated by the job and effectively work with others. Senior leadership teams in organi- zations across the country are often well educated and many of them hold bachelor's degrees, master's degrees or doctorates. As a result, they have the ability to manage stra- tegic planning roles requiring them to undertake tasks involving extensive data collection and analysis. As safety professionals, we need to be able to work with them and be seen by them as capable contributors. It used to be that OHS practitio- ners got their basic training from the school of hard knocks. The injured worker often became the company safety offi cer. Credentialling is more commonplace now in occupational health and safety with thousands of safety practitioners obtaining one of many available designations and certifi cations, such as the Cana- dian Registered Safety Professional (CRSP), National Construction Safety Offi cer (NCSO) or Registered Occu- pational Hygienist (ROH). Credentialling in the field of occupational health and safety is definitely a step in the right direction. Credentialling leading to a certifi cation, such as CRSP or ROH, requires pre-requisite academic requirements. It also requires specifi c health and safety work experience. In the case of the CRSP, three years of relevant experience in a safety- intensive role is required. To obtain the ROH, fi ve years of experience working in the fi eld of occupational hygiene is necessary. Both of these certifications require candidates pass a formal standardized exam that assesses knowledge compared to a published competency profi le or body of knowledge. Individuals who achieve these cer- tifi cations must abide by a code of conduct or ethics, and both of these certifi cations require continuous pro- fessional development evidenced by having to participate in a regular re- certifi cation process. So does all of this ensure com- petence? To answer this we must consider how competencies should be assessed. The key to competency assessment is that it needs to be based on actual skills and knowl- edge that a person can demonstrate in the workplace or other contexts to an obser ver. This is different from other approaches where there is no requirement to demonstrate knowledge and skills, for example, where individuals answer questions on a test, which does not guarantee a person will be able to perform a task; it just verifi es she possesses the knowledge. This is a limitation of current credentials in occupational health and safety insofar as they all assess the basic knowledge with the use of an exam. What is missing is the assessment of the soft, transferrable skills — or what I refer to as the leadership skills — needed to succeed as a safety pro- fessional. These transferrable skills include pure leadership, communi- cation, consensus building, confl ict resolution and problem-solving. We need more leaders. A leader is some- one who infl uences good decisions and positive behaviour. Leaders see work that needs to be done and do it even though they know someone else may get credit for it. Leadership is hard, but leadership skills can be developed. What we need is access to formalized leadership development — this is the leadership imperative. Competency is only achieved when an OHS professional maintains certi- fi cation and the associated hard skills and has the opportunity to continue to practice and develop leadership skills. It is only through commitment, continuing education in these hard and soft skills and practice that an individual can fully develop and then maintain the knowledge, skills and abilities required to serve as an occupa- tional health and safety professional. So why not seek to be it all, both credentialled and competent on the job? When it comes to claiming our spot at the boardroom table, we need to be able to offer a creden- tialled and competent professional ser vice. Certifi cations and educa- tion are invaluable. Coupled with experience and the leadership skills requisite to achieve full professional competence, they are without equal. There are thousands of credentialled safety professionals in Canada. What we need is thousands of competent safety professionals. Glyn Jones is a partner at EHS Partnerships in Calgary and the regional vice-president of Alberta, Northwest Territories and Nunavut for the Canadian Society of Safety Engineering. He teaches occupational health and safety at the University of Alberta, the University of Calgary and the University of New Brunswick. He can be reached at gjones@ehsp.ca. GLYN JONES TRAINING & DEVELOPMENT GLYN JONES TRAINING The classic OH&S resource in the format you prefer Now you can access the go to OH&S resource for Ontario companies – the "Green Book" – as a smart eBook on your iPad, Android tablet or directly from your web browser. Powered by the Thomson Reuters ProView™ app, our eBook gives you the freedom and fl exibility to work wherever and whenever you want. 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