How to Create Win/Win Client and Safety Consultant Relationships – What a Consultant Should Know Part 3: Safety Consulting Expertise, Do the Right Type of Work
How to Create Win/Win Client and Safety Consultant Relationships – What a Consultant Should Know Part 2: Document Critical Communications
March 31, 2021
How to Create Win/Win Client and Safety Consultant Relationships – What a Consultant Should Know Part 4: Safety Consultant Excellence, Separate Your Company From the Competition
May 4, 2021
Introduction
NOTE: This is part three of a four-part series discussing what health and safety consultants should know about client and consultant relationships. This blog discusses how health and safety consultants can focus on doing work within their safety consulting expertise to ensure a mutually beneficial relationship with their clients.
If you are a health and safety consultant, you have competing responsibilities. With so many demands, it can be easy to lose focus on what matters – your clients. After all, a happy client equals a happy consultant (most of the time anyway!). I believe consultants should think about if they are doing work within their area of expertise– for both themselves and their clients.
If you are a client you can read this article on some of the benefits of hiring a health and safety consultant.
Background
I have worked for consulting firms and industry (clients) in various health, safety, and environment (HSE) roles. I started my HSE career working for a smaller environmental consulting firm. Since 2015, I have been operating my consulting firm, Risk Defense Inc. I have worked with clients from education, logistics, IT, transportation, staffing, environmental engineering, occupational health, construction, and oil and gas. While working in industry, before starting up Risk Defense Inc., I also got an opportunity to do some consulting for a power generation and distribution company in the Caribbean.
I have also worked as an employee/client in the oil and gas (service and producer companies), agriculture, outdoor adventure, and construction industries. I share this because I have some valuable insights that I can share from both sides of the client/consultant coin.
Focus on Your Safety Consulting Expertise
Some health and safety consultants believe that their world is one of feast or famine. This is a limiting belief and can be easily managed by effectively using business strategies such as marketing, sales, networking, etc. From my perspective, it is about maximizing your time and resources and doing work within your area of safety consulting expertise. This way, you can deliver a high-level service or product while managing a profitable business.
If you are a health and safety consultant, then the relationship you have with your clients is both crucial to the success of your business and in helping your customers manage their operations while mitigating the associated HSE risk. As a consultant, it is vital that you understand how doing work within your area of safety consulting expertise influences this relationship.
Each health and safety consultant has an area(s) of expertise. So they should make sure they are offering their skillsets of strength to their clients. Taking jobs for which they are not qualified or taking on more work than they can handle may come back and haunt them by destroying their relationships with their clients. It can take years to build a reputation and only a few missteps to damage one’s credibility.
Work Within Your Safety Consulting Expertise
Lining Up Your Safety Consulting Expertise With Your Work
Many health and safety consultants get themselves in trouble by taking on too much work. Or taking on work outside their skill set. Doing the right work is not just about doing work that you are qualified to do (and draws from your strengths) but also finding the right work/life balance to ensure the work that you do is top-notch and makes you proud.
Most health and safety consultants are considered generalists. They need to provide multiple services to satisfy the needs of potential and existing clients. For example, a generalist may create/update HSE manuals, and conduct HSE audits as most clients require these services. An example of a specialist would be an industrial hygienist.
So, if a consultant (or client employee for that matter) is not a certified industrial hygienist - while they might be able to do some basic occupational hygiene work like screening for potential chemical exposure (i.e., determine if there is the potential for exposure and preliminary use of sampling equipment) - they likely do not possess the required experience and knowledge to carry out workplace chemical exposure measurement, mitigation, and management projects.
Network and Focus on Your Safety Consulting Expertise
Suppose you do not have the necessary qualifications, experience, and training to do some work. In this case, you should not, as it can lead to an inferior product or service, it goes against one’s professional designation code of ethics, and as a result, you may face litigation. The way I handle this potential challenge is through networking. I have a strong network of HSE professionals. I believe I am providing my clients with a higher level of service by referring them to an expert.
This creates a win/win/win situation as the client has the right consultant (or at least the right option), the consultant is potentially set up with work within their area of expertise, and I was able to connect two of my contacts. I have done this many times. It always gives me a sense of great satisfaction because I provided a service that helped others. Who knows that may or may not come back to help me down the road. If you need a specialist, i.e., industrial hygienist, transportation safety, etc., please do not hesitate to reach out to me as I will connect you with an expert.
By sticking to doing the work they are qualified for, the health and safety consultant can also avoid the pitfall of taking on too much work and being stretched too thin. While consulting may include times of feast and famine, successful consultants are in this for the long haul. Accordingly, the long-term strategy should be to grow organically at a sustainable rate. If you take on too much, it will likely lead to lower quality of work and increased stress and fatigue. And this affects more than just one’s professional life. The importance of a successful balance between work and home life balance cannot be understated here.
Conclusion
Let me conclude with a real-life example. One of my clients inquired if I could develop an online HSE management system. Having developed several of these, I accepted the request without receiving a formal RFP or even an email (click here for my blog on the importance of clear documented communication). Once I started the project, I found out I would also be responsible for some basic coding. I begrudgingly complied as I had already begun developing some tools for the project.
This was a mistake. Even though I told them that this was something I had never done before, and coding was outside my expertise, they told me it was no big deal. Someone with coding experience would have done a better job. Also, I could have focused on one of my areas of expertise. Which, in this case, would have been to build the high-level structure of the management system.
I have since turned down similar opportunities that do not fit my skillsets. After all, I only want to do work that adds value for my clients.
I trust this story illustrates why it is crucial for health and safety consultants to think about if they are doing work they are qualified for and have the capacity to properly complete. If health and safety consultants remember these two points before accepting work, the consultant has added another piece to the successful consultant and client win/win relationship puzzle.
For more information, please contact Risk Defense Inc. by filling out the contact form below.
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