Safety is truly all about accountability. Whether we like it or not.

There is no better indicator of accountability than when a worker is safe, or when there is an incident that causes injury or death. Either way, accountability can be given to all, or it can be investigated and discovered. Sometimes accountability is necessary but not desired, especially if that accountability falls at the feet of a supervisor or the company in general.

[Image courtesy of Flickr user jdog90 via a Creative Commons license]

[Image courtesy of Flickr user jdog90 via a Creative Commons license]

Accountability is practically mandated to keep workers safe and companies profitable, and that goes throughout the organization. But certainly one of the key staff positions where accountability is needed and relied upon is in the office of the safety officer on-site. Jim Ramsay wrote about this earlier this year in an article for Professional Safety magazine.

However, Ramsay take a little different tack on the topic, in that he does not focus on accountability among those who have been in the safety profession for years; rather, he takes a hard and critical look at college and university graduates, many of whom are graduated without the accreditation that would engender confidence and certainty to potential employers.

In this case, there is another level of accountability. Ramsay wrote in his piece that not only are there students who come out of school without proper or noted accreditation, but that many graduates come out of programs that are not regionally or nationally accredited for their educational programs and the skills they teach to students. What you ultimately have, then, is a big crap-shoot when it it comes to hiring a young safety officer into your company. I am not to say that every unaccredited graduate is not competent at their job or do not know what to do, but accreditation would mean that companies would have assurances that the young graduate has had the training and meets a level of standard that is expected within the profession, as well as a level of ethics and integrity upon which companies can rely.

While this may be seen as exclusionary in some circles, disenfranchising those who may want to be involved in safety, the idea behind accreditation is not to be elite, but rather to ensure a level of quality control among professionals in the industry. But Ramsay warns that not all accreditation programs or processes are the same, and that goes especially in terms of academics.

While it is important to find accredited programs and institutions, it is a good idea that if you are looking to hire a college or university graduate, to pay attention to the entities that are doing the accreditation. As there are “diploma factories” that churn out degrees that are flimsy at best, there are some accreditation bodies that may not have sterling reputations, so it is good to do your homework on these organizations just as much as on the academic programs and schools themselves to find the right kind of graduate to fill your entry-level safety positions.

Ramsay advises that doing a background check on new graduates should entail researching any and all accreditations at the school and in the program in which the student matriculated; two sources to find recognized accreditation organizations are the U.S. Department of Education and the Council on Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA), which you could look up online.