Webinar: The Safety Professional as Change Agent
NOVEMBER 23, 2022
On December 8, CSSE is presenting a webinar on how safety professionals can initiate and implement change in their organizations.
This session will be facilitated by Gary Phillips, BA, BEd, MA (Adult Education), CRSP (Canadian Registered Safety Professional), and CHRP (Certified Human Resource Professional). Gary will explore change management tools and methods, and provide tips to help participants build their competencies in leading effective safety change.
Gary is an experienced organizational development consultant, trainer, and safety professional. Through his company, Northwest Training and Development, Gary provides leadership development, occupational health and safety training, and communications and training skills as well as consulting, board development, strategic planning, and personal and professional coaching. He works with for-profit, public, and not-for-profit organizations, as well as First Nations organizations and individuals.
The webinar will shine a spotlight on the safety professional and their role in change management, as Gary believes strongly that they are uniquely and naturally positioned to be change agents in their organizations. “Because they come from a multi-disciplinary profession, they tend to have access to the whole organization and to see it when it goes into error mode—from top to bottom. And so I think they probably have the best insight of anyone in their organization to start pushing for change and nudging their organization to what is really a state of needed adaptability for the future.”
He emphasizes that organizations can often get “stuck” and end up with problems that persist despite their best efforts because these situations are held up by unwritten rules, internal logic, and assumptions that people make. To illustrate this, Gary will present a few examples of assumptions that have been made about safety over the last 50 years, and how, although they may work in one situation, they may not work in others. Thus, “there’s a need for safety professionals—and everyone, really—to acknowledge that when the context or the operating conditions change, we need to make a different adjustments to what would’ve been standard procedures. How do you move out of that to what’s referred to as second-order change when you need to respond to bigger changes around you?
Interested in attending the course? Don’t delay! Registration closes on December 6.