DEPARTMENTS
PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE
DINA M. SIEGEL, CIH, CSP, FAIHA, is semi-retired and is currently a guest scientist at Los Alamos National
Laboratory, where she worked for 25 years in a variety of management and contributor roles. Her previous experience included OEHS for federal, contractor, and consultant firms.
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Becoming Better Communicators
BY DINA M. SIEGEL, AIHA PRESIDENT
Effective communication is a skill we all strive to improve in our work and our personal lives. It helps us present our technical skills as OEHS professionals. It drives our ability to act on concerns relayed to us by a worker. Most of all, it builds trust with workers, management, and community members, so that we can help achieve a world where all workers and their communities are healthy and safe.
A COMPLEX GOAL
Under the guidance of our Content Portfolio Advisory Group, AIHA is developing training, education, and other products intended to help occupational and environmental health and safety professionals become more effective communicators. This goal is more complex than it might seem at first. OEHS professionals must communicate with many different audiences, including workers, management, the media, and the public. What works for one audience may not work for another.
We must also communicate about a wide variety of topics using a wide range of skills. A few vital skills include listening to stakeholders’ concerns, describing risk and its implications, stating the business value of OEHS, responding to workplace incidents, and supporting emergency response. Education is needed to help our members master these and other communication skills.
Additional challenges stem from increased public skepticism toward experts. Technological advances such as artificial intelligence feed the perception that expertise isn’t necessary to communicate about scientific topics. Yet another challenge is that most people think they’re better communicators than they really are.
The need for these skills is recognized under the AIHA content priority “communicating OEHS concepts.” One recent success related to this priority is the publication of work by Peter M. Sandman on AIHA’s website. Sandman is a risk communication expert who coined the “risk = hazard + outrage” formula. You can improve your risk communication skills by exploring the material.
Another success was the webinar “Strategies for Effective Risk Communication,” which discussed topics such as the power of storytelling and preparing disaster communication plans. The webinar recording is available for purchase from the AIHA website.
Technological advances such as artificial intelligence feed the perception that expertise isn’t necessary to communicate about scientific topics.
TOOLS FOR COMMUNICATING OEHS CONCEPTS
Other projects that support OEHS professionals’ communication skills are in progress, such as updating AIHA publications with communication-related topics. You can get a sense of the scope of this work and submit ideas for new projects using this dashboard. Our volunteers’ work on these projects will go a long way toward giving OEHS professionals the tools to improve their skills, better position themselves to advance in their careers, and, most importantly, help keep workers healthy and safe.
PREVENTION THROUGH DESIGN
One of my highlights this year was participating in the Prevention through Design Award ceremony in October. With its emphasis on eliminating hazards in the design phase, the PtD Award represents the pinnacle of the hierarchy of controls. At the ceremony, which was held during the National Safety Council Congress and Expo in New Orleans, AIHA was formally recognized as a PtD Award partner, joining NSC, NIOSH, and the American Society of Safety Professionals (ASSP). I was on hand to thank this year’s entrants and express AIHA’s gratitude for the invitation to participate in this prestigious award beginning in 2024.
The 2023 PtD Award winner is the Port of Portland, which was recognized for following PtD methods during the creation of a large parking and rental car center at Portland International Airport. Like previous PtD Award winners, including AIHA member Georgi Popov in 2022, the Port of Portland was honored in part for its communication efforts. These efforts involved frequent meetings where employees were informed about construction activities and engineering controls.
This award-winning example demonstrates the crucial role of communication in protecting workers. Communication is a large but underrated aspect of our work. Improving our communication skills as OEHS professionals will help make our interventions more effective.
RESOURCE
National Safety Council: “NSC and Partners Announce Winner of Prevention Through Design Award” (October 2023).