Surveying the role of safety professionals: Objectives methods and early results

This paper describes the survey set up by the International Social Security Association (ISSA) and taken over by the European Network of Safety & Health Professional Organisations (ENSHPO), which is collecting data on the tasks carried out by safety professionals in a range of European countries. It provides some background of the reasons why the survey was undertaken, describes the set up of the survey, the design of the questionnaire and the way in which it was distributed and analysed. It then describes some initial results of the survey. The initial tabular results of studies carried out in seven countries are compared to give an indication of how uniform the role and tasks of safety professionals are across the enlarged European Union. The results cover Norway (N), the Netherlands (NL), Germany (D), Finland (Su), Italy (I), Poland (PL) and the United Kingdom (UK). The paper concentrates on discussing the core tasks of the safety professionals and the main types of hazard with which they are occupied in their professional work. From the Dutch and Norwegian data there are results showing some profiles of safety practitioners, indicating some diversity in clustering of tasks. The paper raises some questions for discussion and further analysis once the full results of the survey are available.