We live in very competitive times where jobs are few and job seekers are many. This Covid pandemic and the collapse of the Oil market does not help but makes it even more challenging to find or hold a job.
With so many HSE Professionals losing their jobs the market is now flooded with HSE Professionals looking for work to support their families.
We have recently seen firsthand how competitive the job market is in a recruitment campaign for a client. It is usual to see many candidates that are not qualified or experienced enough for the position they are applying for. But in this case we were blown away by the candidates that had PHDs and 20 years plus experience applying for a position that they were in perhaps 10 years ago in their HSE Carrier.
This led us to dig a bit deeper and do a survey of approximately 200 HSE Professionals in various stages in their carrier.
We were shocked at the results and decided to do a knowledge assessment of around 120 of the HSE Professionals that took part in the survey.
In the beginning of the assessment each participant was asked what professional and personal skills they had to develop?
What their strengths and weaknesses were.
What they thought was missing in regards to their education or performance.
In most cases it was easy for them to identify the strengths, skills and competencies. But when it came to the weaknesses, skills and gaps the responses became slow and the participants mostly struggled. We will revisit this subject again.
We found that 65% of the assessed participants (most HSE Engineers, Supervisors and Officers) were making up knowledge for questions being asked. This meant that 65% of the HSE Professionals even though qualified and experienced had very little understanding of the job they were doing.
They were literally making up information to answer a question they clearly did not have knowledge in to avoid at all cost to say I do not know……………
So after finishing the 20 questions relating to HSE System implementation and monitoring. We had a quick chat with the participants and got them to let their guard down.
When we asked them why they provided the responses for the questions they did not know the answers to, they all responded I could not say I don’t know. How would I look? What kind of an HSE Professional would not answer a question about their daily job and so on.
We then delve a bit deeper and identified the reason for such responses.
The reason for this is that all humans have a mechanism designed to protect the identity that we have created for our self. This mechanism is called EGO. Ego is not a bad thing it has its purpose, but when not controlled it has a devastating effect on our thoughts and behaviors. We start to create a world where we are something that we are really not in the common reality. It is kind of living in a lie.
They felt that they had to say something to appear knowledgeable and competent. They were motivated to prove them self as worthy.
So after getting this information we asked them to just take a minute to think of them self as transparent and that we could see when they are telling the truth or making up information. We assured them that there are no right or wrong answers and that there is no competition here. This is actually an assessment to help them to become better at what they do.
Thus we asked the same questions:
What professional and personal skills they had to develop?
What their strengths and weaknesses were.
What they thought was missing in regards to their education or performance.
The results were extremely different. In some cases the strengths mentioned the first time round became the weaknesses. But by far the weaknesses, skills and obstacles outnumbered the strengths and actual possessed skills by far.
The 20 questions were then asked again and most of the participants scored below 8 out of 20 leaving an average of 12 I don’t knows.
This provides some interesting information on how competition and ego can affect the mindset and behavior of HSE Professionals and blur the lines of reality.
Thus we should always cultivate awareness of our true knowledge and experience and accept it. That way we can develop and progress in our HSE Carries.