How to Create Win/Win Client and Safety Consultant Relationships – What a Consultant Should Know Part 1: Safety Consultant Value

From my perspective, if you are a health and safety consultant, then the relationship you have with your clients is crucial to your business’s success and in helping your customers manage their operations while mitigating the associated HSE risk. As a health and safety consultant, you must understand the part you play in this relationship.

Safety consultant value is how the consultant adds value to the client through the services they provide to the project. Adding value can mean many things, including:

1. Sharing one’s relevant expertise and experience
2. Thinking outside the box (easy to say, harder to do)
3. Offering complimentary and unique services

NOTE: Adding value is also not about slimming down an invoice. After all, safety consultant value is about adding to the equation, not subtracting from it.

Maybe you think you are already adding value. Maybe you are… but maybe you are not… or at least you are not from the client’s perspective. Each client has a different perspective on how a health and safety consultant can add value. Accordingly, it is vital to understand what that is. If you do not know, ask questions to find out! The following describes some best practices that I found to be helpful while working as a client representative.

1. Add Safety Consultant Value by Sharing Expertise and Experience

Most health and safety consultants are technically competent and have the required designations. So you will not stand out from the crowd based on your technical skillset alone. Adding value goes beyond the minimum (knowing what you are doing and doing what you said you would - as per your proposal) but can include sharing relevant expertise and experience to the project.

After all, the client is hiring you for your expertise and guidance on matters outside of the organization's expertise. If you have insight on how to proceed with a project or have a better way how to manage the organization's risk, offer it up. The worst thing that can happen is your client goes in a different direction, but the best-case scenario is that you have added safety consultant value by helping to solve a problem, have established credibility with the client, and you may have just lined up your next job.

2. Add Safety Consultant Value by Showing The Client You Think Outside the Box

Another example of how to add safety consultant value to your client is by thinking outside the box. Essentially, this means looking at the project differently than others. This could mean looking at the project from different positions or perspectives (i.e., how does this problem look from the view of a regulator vs. my client vs. my initial perspective) and then sharing one’s insights. One way the health and safety consultant can do this is by challenging any assumptions made by the client. For example, if a client believes that complicated processes to satisfy board requirements are more important than simple processes made for the frontline, ask why, ensure you understand their position, and then, when appropriate, respectfully share another perspective.

One must be careful using this approach as some people are easy to offend (even if they say they are not!), but it can show that you are objective and can think critically and that adds value. Not all clients will be open to all your suggestions, but the smart ones will listen and understand what you are trying to do. If nothing else, it will force them to think about their position. And then they will be better prepared the next time the same argument comes their way (maybe from their boss!).

3. What Other Services Do You Offer?

Another way to add safety consultant value is to let clients know about other services you provide. At Risk Defense Inc, we offer customized audit services, including developing customized audit protocols and performing these audits. If you are conducting an ISO or COR audit, it is not a bad idea to let the client know what else you can do and how it benefits them. Now, if you are too pushy or salesy (is that a word?), this can turn your client off, but if you genuinely care and want to help them, that will come through. And you never know, your client might be looking for those services.

The above is an example of a complementary service to what you already provide. A unique service is something that you do differently than the competition or perhaps a service you offer that the competition does not. Unique services add value to your customers because you combine your unique offering with more common ones and separate yourself from the competition. At Risk Defense, we offer Mindful Safety programs where we integrate traditional HSE programs or management systems with mindfulness. This helps workers improve their focus and awareness with simple and practical exercises that can be practiced anywhere and anytime.

Click here to check out the full list of services we offer.

One of the things that I have done in my consulting business to add safety consultant value is to offer free mentoring to my client HSE representatives. In some cases, this is not necessary. Still, many times the HSE professional is not hired until after a service is complete. For example, the client now needs someone to manage their management system. Another example is the existing staff member is junior and still learning the HSE ropes.

One of my clients was bidding on a substantial piece of a billion-dollar project but did not have an HSE professional on staff. So in addition to developing their HSE management system, I coached up some of their operations staff to be able to answer questions from their client and even lined up a qualified Senior HSE Manager in the event their bid was successful.

This article has explained why it is essential for health and safety consultants to think about how they are adding value to their clients (in a way the client appreciates). If health and safety consultants keep adding value to their clients front and center, the foundation has been set for a successful consultant and client win/win relationship.

For more information on how to maximize client/health and safety consultant relationships and how this can benefit your company (or to discuss other ideas on how to take HSE at your company to the next level), please contact Risk Defense Inc. by filling out the contact form below.