I didn't see much value in health and safety

In fall 2015, I didn't know too much of health and safety topic. It was more of compliance matter which had to be done. I could say that I didn't value health and safety much.

That was when Fredrik, one of the founders of NordSafety (nowadays part of Quentic) contacted me. He was asking if I would be interested to join their team. I did some research and wasn't sure would companies really spend money on a mobile app for health and safety reporting. Also NordSafety was a small company with only few customers.

After few discussions with the founders and careful consideration I jumped in, despite knowing nothing about health and safety. Decision, which I probably might not dare to do anymore with the daughter to feed and mortgage to pay.

Is it necessary for a sales/marketing person to understand customers work or is the product knowledge enough?

So there I was responsible for sales and marketing at small startup at its early years, knowing nothing about safety. Timo Kronlöf, one of the founders gave me a crash course to the safety management during the first days. I attended several health safety seminars and conferences, to meet potential customers and to learn more about the industry.

That time the Nordsafety mobile solution was quite simple. Development team was pushing hard to implement new features. Increasing complexity of the product moved sales towards high touch model, where more and more consultative approach was needed in sales and marketing. Which meant that the sales / marketing guy had to learn more and more about health and safety.

If you really want to identify what is the customers challenge and help to solve it, you need to understand their work.

Why did I spend time to learn about health and safety? Wouldn't knowing your product be enough? In my opinion it is not. If you really want to identify what is the customers challenge and help to solve it, you need to understand their work. Also understanding customers field of work enables sales and marketing to collect better information for the product development on what is really needed in the product. Good example of this is the new incidents and observations module Quentic launched this year. We took learnings from the customers and industry and designed whole incidents and observations tool again to meet the requirements of the modern world.

Impostor syndrome

After a year I got invitation to speak in a health and safety event. My first reaction was: What?! Me? Little while ago I didn't know anything about health and safety and honestly I didn't value work of health and safety people to be too important for business.

Topic was about incidents and observations and their significance. Audience was safety preventatives and site/project managers. In the morning when I went to the event, I was having serious impostor syndrome. What am I doing in safety event talking about safety? I'm not health and safety expert.

maybe I'm not an impostor?

I went through the day and after my talk several people told me that it was very good and eye opening, they now saw more value in reporting incidents and observations. It was not anymore just because they had a target to reach in observations submissions. Which raised a thought, maybe I'm not an impostor?

💡 Work in health and safety is valuable

Now bit over 5 years later, I value a lot health and safety professionals and their work. I have really learned to respect the effort HSE people make to ensure that everyone goes home safely, as well as the benefit to business they bring. I'm constantly following the discussion among the experts globally and I'm really interested on the topics such as safety 1&2, behavior based safety, psychological safety. I also have learned to know many of the leading experts in the field around the world and I have met hundreds of safety professionals over the years.

I have really learned to respect the effort HSE people make to ensure that everyone goes home safely

For 5 years I have worked together with my colleagues to compile a safety management trend report, which includes interviews of industry experts on the most important trends in the safety management. This year we will introduce a new section in the report where we have given voice to hundreds of frontline safety professionals in form of a survey. It gives interesting view on how safety management is seen in the frontline.

The report is for me also great way to see what are the hottest topics and trends in the industry to follow at the moment. Safety Management Trend Report 2021 is coming out next month. You can subscribe to Quentic newsletter to get information as soon as it is out or follow us in social media.