ABSTRACT
The individuals who manage and direct the safety and health efforts of companies and organizations impact not only the companies or organizations but also the health and even the lives of individual employees. If we assembled a hundred U.S.-based companies and organizations of varying sizes in a room and asked them to identify the qualications of the person they wanted to manage their safety and health efforts, we would receive a multitude of different responses depending on the structure and requirements of the specic organization. If we probed a little further with these companies and organizations, we would also nd that there would be different educational requirements, different weight provided to the value of certicates, different pay scales, varying weights provided to professional association afliation, different managerial levels, different job descriptions, and virtually no ethical or professional conduct guidance. We would also nd very quickly that there are no standardized educational requirements, no competency testing, no licensure, no required professional organizations, and no mandatory codes of ethics or professional conduct required to be a safety and health professional. In short, a safety and health professional is primarily whomever the company or organization hires and places the title “safety and health manager” on their ofce door. Given the above, is safety and health truly a “profession” within the perimeters of other recognized professionals within our society?
