The Safety Officer: An Emerging Management Role?

DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1108/eb055457
Date01 February 1982
Published date01 February 1982
Pages35-38
AuthorP.B. Beaumont,J.W. Leopold,J.R. Coyle
Subject MatterHR & organizational behaviour
The Safety Officer:
An
Emerging
Management
Role?*
P.B. Beaumont, Department of Social and Economic Research, University of Glasgow
J.W. Leopold and J.R. Coyle,
Centre for Research in Industrial Democracy and Participation, University of Glasgow
Introduction
The safety officer is a person who has been around in in-
dustry for a not inconsiderable period of time, but about
whom relatively little is known. Some indication of the
historical nature of the safety officer function can be ob-
tained by an examination of the aims and membership of
the Institution of Industrial Safety Officers (now called the
Institution of Occupational Safety and Health). This in-
stitution, which was formed in 1953, had a membership of
some 2,000 at the time of the Robens Committee Report
(1970-72) and aimed to raise safety officers' standards of
professional competence, to exchange information and to
develop accident prevention methods and techniques.
Some further historical evidence is provided by a Factory
Inspectorate Survey in 1968 which revealed that less than
25 per cent of plants with more than 50 employees had
safety officers, with considerable inter-industry variation
being apparent—from less than ten per cent of plants in
some industries to over 70 per cent in gas, electricity and
water. The vast majority of these safety officers were part
time[1].
There have been frequent expressions of concern about
the relatively low status of the safety officer within the
management decision-making hierarchy. This concern is
well reflected in the following extract from the Report of
the Robens Committee[2].
...there is an important role for the specialist safety ad-
viser or safety officer, standing in the same relationship
to line management as do other specialists such as per-
sonnel officers. We received a lot of evidence about
safety, officers, much of it to the effect that their role is
under-valued and that in consequence the work does not
attract and retain sufficient people of the right calibre.
Estimates made in recent years indicated that there are
not more than about fifteen hundred full-time safety of-
ficers employed in factories, with perhaps two to three
thousand more who act part-time in this capacity. Un-
doubtedly they vary widely in qualifications, capacity
and status. Some are highly-qualified professionals in
very senior posts responsible for the development of
safety policy and co-ordination at high level. At the
other extreme there are safety officers who do little
more than maintain basic records, issue protective
clothing and conduct routine investigations into ac-
cidents.
The Robens Committee was urged to try to help raise the
status of safety officers by recommending that all firms
over a certain size appoint such a person whose duties and
*This paper is based on on-going research being funded by the
Leverhulme Foundation.
qualifications should be prescribed in statutory regula-
tions.
This was not, however, a step that the committee
strongly favoured as, in its view, a genuine
rise
in the status
of such persons would only come about if "employers
recognise the importance of the subject of safety and
health and perceive the need for specialist assistance within
the management team"
[3].
It has been argued that the status of the personnel
management function has risen substantially as a result of
the extensive programme of industrial relations legislation
during the 1970s[4], and we would expect the provisions of
the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 to have led to such
a rise in the status of the safety officer. Admittedly, it is
difficult to put a precise figure on the number of safety of-
ficers in Britain at the present time. The Institution of Oc-
cupational Safety and Health (so renamed in January
1981) has recently put the number in the region of 10,000
based on people who have the word "safety" in their job
title[5].
In fact, it was decided against having a generic
noun in the new title due to the variety of members' job
titles.
This was confirmed by our own study in that the ma-
jority interviewed were called safety officers, but a
substantial minority had other titles, such as safety ad-
visers,
safety engineers, etc. The above figure includes
both qualified and unqualified individuals, as well as full-
time and part-time people. The Institution estimates that
its current membership accounts for some 60 per cent of
qualified safety officers, with its membership growing by
around ten per cent a year.
This general expectation of a rise in the status of safety
officers constitutes the background to this article which
uses information drawn from our on-going study of the
operation of joint health and safety committees in the
manufacturing sector in Britain. This project involves in-
terviews with five members of such committees: the senior
management member, a line manager, the safety officer,
and two employee side members. The study will ultimately
cover committees in
50
different plants, but here
we
use the
information obtained from the interviews conducted in the
36 plants investigated to date. In all but three of these
plants there were safety officers and so we use our sample
data to investigate two specific issues here: (i) some basic
characteristics of safety officers, including their position in
the management hierarchy, and (ii) the relationship of
safety officers to the operation of joint health and safety
committees.
Safety Officers: Some Characteristics and Place in the
Management Hierarchy
In just over half of our 33 plants the safety officers were
full-time, with the remainder combining health and safety
with another management function, frequently either
Safety Officers | 35

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