Why Most Safety Professionals Burn Out — and How to Come Back from the Brink
There is a better way ...
If, like me, you’re drawn to a field like Occupational Health and Safety, you’ve entered the field motivated to do something positive, to protect people and to make a difference.
Unfortunately, many professionals who enter the field motivated to make a difference, soon find themselves overwhelmed, stressed out and wondering if they should quit.
I’ve felt it myself.
Early in my career I saw a couple of serious injuries that were unfortunately life-changing for the people involved. I saw the long hours of therapy, emotional struggles, frustration with completing even simple daily tasks and thought, “If I can prevent even one more person from having to go through this, then I’ve done something positive with my life.”
And that thought has carried me through 13 years in the field.
Key Points at a Glance
· Burnout, stress and overwhelm are common among safety professionals.
· This is often a result of frequent conflict, lack of control and agency despite the high level of responsibility and the feeling of isolation in workplaces with small safety teams.
· Combatting this feeling requires a multi-factorial approach by reframing success, building allies where possible and focusing on high leverage tasks.
But there have been some rough moments. Days when you feel completely overwhelmed, drowning in deadlines, carrying the weight of the responsibility, feeling like you’re on a desert island shouting into the wind and no one seems to notice or care. Even the employees you’re trying to protect.
Long hours, compliance pressure, resistance from workers and managers, and in many companies being the 'one-person safety department' create exhaustion. It’s easy to disengage, go through the motions, or just move on to another career.
But it doesn’t have to be that way.
First let’s examine why many safety professionals quickly go from ready to save the world to burnout and stress.
Why It Happens
Burnout among safety professionals is almost always one of these 5 reasons:
· Constant Conflict: In some workplace cultures, the safety department is seen as the bad guy. The person who holds up production, scolds people to wear their safety glasses and is basically as welcome as ants at a picnic. This wears you down over time and chips away at your motivation.
· High Responsibility, Low Authority: In some companies, the safety department has very little decision making authority. This combination of being responsible for everything, without agency to enact change leads to high levels of frustration and a feeling of helplessness.
· Emotional Toll: Investigating incidents, dealing with injuries, and carrying the weight of 'what if something goes wrong?' feels like a weight you carry with you every … single … day. Just as first responders are often at risk of PTSD from the experiences they have on the job, long time safety professionals can be at risk for emotional and mental burnout.
· Workload Creep: Safety gets everything from training to compliance paperwork dumped on them. Sometimes, security and quality too. Given the fact that most safety departments are understaffed, this is a recipe for stress, poor performance and undesirable outcomes.
· Isolation: Many safety professionals are the sole safety person in their workplace. Aside from the workload issues that creates, the feeling of isolation is even worse. Often there is no one else in the company with a thorough grounding in health and safety basics and this can leave you feeling like Tom Hanks in Castaway.
How to Fix It
So what can you do to reclaim your energy and enthusiasm for the job?
As with most things in life, there’s no easy answer. My suggestion is to start with small positive moments each day. Reach out to co-workers, build relationships and allies at your workplace. Those personal connections can be a lifeline when you’re struggling with the weight of responsibility.
Here are some other things that can help:
· Shift the Role from Cop to Coach: Worry less about enforcement and focus on coaching, not policing. Taking the approach of coaching people to help them stay safe is a much more positive and palatable approach for everyone involved than trying to be the bad cop all the time. Of course, sometimes you have to enforce the rules, but a softer approach can lead to less conflict more often than not.
· Prioritize & Protect: Ditch the busywork as much as possible. Use the 80/20 rule and identify the 20% of tasks that prevent 80% of incidents. Get the most important work done, but don’t try to be everything for everyone. It’s not possible and will take a heavy toll if you try.
· Build Allies: Recruit safety champions at every level, supervisors, frontline workers, anyone who can help to spread responsibility. Safety for an entire company is too much for one person to manage. The more you can get help, or even just advocates for safety, the easier it will be.
· Protect Yourself: If you had a co-worker who was constantly stressed, had trouble reaching out and was dealing with unreasonable work demands, wouldn’t you do everything in your power to protect that person? What if that person was you?
It’s not always easy but do your best to set realistic boundaries, take breaks and vacations, maybe join a professional network for support and ongoing learning to stay engaged. You might feel like you can’t afford to take the time for a break or vacation, but can you afford a long term leave or job change if the stress becomes too much? Better to build rest into your program before it becomes a health necessity.
· Reframe Success: Celebrate small wins, not just zero-injury streaks. As a safety professional Some days you feel like the Maytag repairman, some days you feel like the Captain of the Titanic. Take the successes where you can get them. Any single positive change could be the thing that prevents someone from a serious injury.
Burnout isn’t a sign of weakness, it’s the result of caring too much in a system that doesn’t always support safety. By protecting your energy, building support, and focusing on what matters most, you can stay effective and keep your passion for safety alive.
That’s it for this week.
Are you a safety professional who is suffering or has suffered from burnout? How did you change it? Or did you?
Let me know in the comments.
Safety Pro Weekly is published every Tuesday morning on LinkedIn and Substack.
Have a great week,
Dan