What drives a person to go for safety profession?

Appointment of safety officers/supervisors/captains/coordinators by production facilities under Factories Act is a mandatory requirement. A number of institutions offer certificate/PG courses with duration ranging from one week to two years. There is no bar on educational qualifications or experience for some of these courses. For awareness, I feel this is alright. However, for those for appointment as safety officers, prior experience in plant operations should be a must before joining the course, without which they can't understand the operations and theoretical knowledge alone will not be sufficient.

Though, the respect for safety professionals in reality is not much and is a thankless job as those in other professions feel that safety procedures and advice are only a bottleneck for achieving higher productivity, the reasons for taking up this profession can be many, like, self interest, advice from family members / friends / teachers / others, job opportunities, compulsion (transfer from one post to another or promotion within the organization), notion that work will be less / no responsibility, etc. Salary is generally good and is comparable up to certain level with other professions and is even stated in similar lines in the Factories Act. Monthly salary varies from Rs 5,000/- for freshers/trainees to few lakhs of rupees  for senior positions.

However, last week my colleague who retired from service told his reasons for joining the safety department three decades ago, which I liked very much and felt that without this one can't do justice to the safety profession.

The reasons my colleague stated are,

• love for the profession
• opportunity to help others to identify hazards and suggest measures for their safety
• satisfaction from preventing accidents/losses and feel of social service
• opportunity to interact with all employees and many outsiders 
• opportunity to learn continuously from different situations
• excitement from different problems and situations instead of doing routine work for long periods
• opportunity to teach in training programmes and help the participants to have focused view on 'safe production'

Everyday, safety professionals will be facing tough situations at all levels from bottom to top levels leading to arguments, sometimes by facing rebuke and heart burn. One may become pessimistic and frustrated and carry negative thoughts to home at the end of the day and make life miserable for him/her and family also. But if we realize the importance of safety for the organization, possibly, we may not carry the thoughts and derive satisfaction that from whatever we did, we were able to prevent something which is not desirable for the organization.

If the top management commitment and support is available, then the life of safety professional will be easy.