Safety Certified or Safety Competent?

What’s the difference?   Of course, teaching and certifying the many skills necessary to perform in a safe manner is paramount in all safety cultures, but it is only a part of the balance needed to be a truly safe environment.

In working with safety professionals over the years, we’ve heard several questions and comments on this subject, mostly in relation to the effectiveness of safety training required to be certified.  It’s like so many other things.  If you know the proper way of doing something doesn’t necessarily mean you will do it properly. 

Both certification and competency are important but in different ways.  They mean different things.

Safety certification is essentially formal education where safety professionals complete a course of study, pass a written examination, and continue to take professional development courses over their careers.  They are committed to their profession, have set certification as a goal and have achieved it.  The certification is a third-party stamp of approval that validates that knowledge. 

Competency really has nothing to do with formal education.  It refers to the knowledge and skill necessary to complete a task. Many workers without being certified have competencies and are qualified to perform their work safely and often do so with little or no supervision.

As with certification, it takes time to develop competence.  Workers gain competence through initial training, on-the-job training, assessments and other formal qualifications, and especially by completing the job properly and safely every time.  Practice does make perfect and certification alone won’t provide a whole lot of practice. 

Training is a staple in the safety industry.  Workers often take a training course, and then take a test to prove their knowledge. They receive a certificate to prove their compliance in that area.  But when they don’t use this knowledge for an extended period of time it’s almost certain that they won’t be able to gain competence.  Research has shown that we can lose 50% to 80% of what we have learned the day before if we don’t do something with the information.  You miserable if can’t remember where you left you cell phone for a day, but when it comes forgetting safety information or processes it is dangerous!

One of the main reasons that behavior based safety is so successful is that you are constantly looking for and recognizing safety performance.  You are building safety habits, or in other words you are building a safety competent workforce. 

With behavior based safety you establish standards and criteria to assess competency through evaluation, use training for those who show gaps in competency, and then recognize improved performance.  You use the knowledge gained through certification to grow the competency of your workforce. 

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