Coaching skills for safety people

Michael Emery, CMIOSH, of Securus Health and Safety Limited discusses the need for coaching capabilities in safety professionals to support their core technical competencies.

The safety profession in the UK is obsessed with technical training – mostly with the attainment of IOSH and NEBOSH qualifications – to the exclusion of soft-skills training such as coaching and influencing skills. Like many other safety professionals I believe this is to the detriment of the profession. It helps explain why it is that safety people are often regarded as second-tier members of the management team – compliance-police, technically proficient but unable to provide the sort of support that gets the best out of managers and others in the workplace.

My own is experience, having been introduced to high-performance coaching techniques on a generic training course and looking around eagerly, was that nothing specific to safety, existed for me to attend. I was faced with little alternative but to continue my training on another generic course and to write my own Coaching for safety course which has now achieved IOSH approval.