Occupational Health and Safety Leadership

In our working life; It should be known that Occupational Health and Safety is a situation that is everyone’s responsibility. In order for this situation to occur, a safety culture must be formed and entered into the life of our society.

Leadership plays an important role in our lives functionally in the field of Occupational Health and Safety as in every field. Occupational Health and Safety professionals also have important duties in this regard;

• Adopt it as a way of life,
• Acting in line with the role model phenomenon,
• Being open to development,
• Being open to communication,
• To have a good command of national and international legislation,
• To be able to transfer good practices to work environments,
• To be able to make observations and prepare “Regulatory Preventive Actions”,

In addition to the above, they should exhibit behaviors that match what they talk about with their field practices. It is important that logically feasible issues coincide with the field of work. Being a leader in Occupational Health and Safety should not be perceived only as Occupational Safety Specialists, Workplace Physicians, Other Health Personnel or Occupational Health and Safety employees. Considering the life process, everyone in working life should have responsibilities in Occupational Health and Safety. Within the framework of these responsibilities, we can call those who carry innovations, put them into practice, and give direction with their follow-up and observations leaders. In some sectors, there are natural brothers based on experience. These natural elders are decisive in the field of Occupational Health and Safety as in every field with years of experience. They show behaviors that new employees take as an example.

It is necessary to say this in a simple and understandable way. For example, the fact that the person who explains the importance of work shoes and the importance of the hard hat in an on-the-job speech before starting to work is in the field without shoes and without a hard hat shows how sensitive our colleagues will approach this issue. Therefore, we have to ensure the same parallelism in every aspect of our working life in terms of what is spoken or what is theoretical in practice.

“The outstanding leader gets things done with very small actions. He spreads his orders not in many words, but in a few deeds. He is informed by everything, but rarely interferes. It is a catalyst, and if it is not there, even if things don’t go so well, when it succeeds, it takes no credit. And because he takes no credit, the credit never leaves him.” (Lao Tzu)

Ali Şahin
MSc.OHS, GradIOSH