Small Talk....with Sara Pazell

We have asked multiple #safetysisters and #malechampions the same questions, and we want to share their stories, their highs and lows with you.

Meet Sara....

Why do you work in Health and Safety? I work in a work-health profession because this aligns with my values for well-being and prosperity. It is fascinating, complex, scientific, and an art to apply well-evidenced work-health practice in a constructive manner. One must communicate multi-fold benefits via appropriate metrics to politicians, researchers, business leaders, social scientists, operations team leaders, engineering and structural design teams, workforce strategists, wellness coordinators, workers and maintainers, and safety /risk professionals. What do you see for the future of the health and safety profession? Contextualisation and integration with human-centred approaches. Evolution from generic hazard registers to specific task-based business intelligence. Learning how to build upon the emphasis of safety management systems and risk management (first pillar) to design work that is conditioning (physically, socially, psychologically) and provides sustainability (business/economy and environment). Intelligent decision-making, change-readiness, and transparency form the second pillar and design strategy, resource, tools, and capability represent the third pillar. Transformative leadership is required to advance these practices. Importantly, this means not stopping until design provides for conditioning and sustainable work. What is an initiative you have been a part of or seen that you think really impacted safety culture?Good work design via human-centred approaches. Design for diversity (evolving). When done well, no longer is wellness siloed or managed separately from health, safety, and environment; workforce strategy; procurement; engineering; or operations and maintenance.