Feeling lost as a young HSE person
I joined a large manufacturing company a little over a year ago as a safety professional, and honestl I’m feeling pretty lost lately.
Maybe I’m just frustrated and need to vent. Maybe I’m using this thread as free therapy. But I’d genuinely like to hear from people who’ve survived similar environments.
The plant I work at is a legacy unionized facility with a lot of employees who’ve been there 30+ years. The building is old, the habits are old, and there’s a huge disconnect between management and crews. Management turnover is crazy — nobody currently there has more than 3 years of experience at the site, and at one point the plant operated without a plant manager for almost a year.
A lot of employees feel unheard and I can honestly feel the anger and distrust.
Some workers have spent their entire lives at this plant and nowhere else. A lot of them don’t believe change will ever happen anymore, and I don’t blame them. Over time I’ve built some relationships with many of them and most are willing to talk to me, which I appreciate.
But there are also situations that make me feel helpless. For example, we have a forklift driver who’s constantly high and has nearly hit pedestrians more than once, but due to the union environment and lack of consistent HR support, nothing really seems to happen.
Another challenge is that my role itself is new. Before me, safety was co-dutied by someone else with occasional support from corporate HSE. There was never a dedicated person for the plant.
I’m also a young Asian female immigrant with a soft personality, so when I first joined, a lot of people assumed I was there to make posters and do admin work instead of actually driving safety initiatives. The plant management team has generally been respectful and supportive toward me, and they’ve tried to give me exposure. I think that’s one of the main reasons I’m still here. But they’re exhausted too from their KPIs and the plant’s aging infrastructure.
The third thing is corporate politics.
I usually get along better with the actual plant people than corporate HSE. I work with corporate often because of audits, reporting, investigations, etc., and recently I had interactions where some corporate HSE people basically dumped a problem onto me and were sarcastic about it even though it wasn’t my issue to begin with.
English isn’t my first language, so sometimes I can’t tell when people are being mean or passive aggressive. But this time I definitely felt it.
After that incident I started questioning my future in this field. I don’t want to become bitter like some of the people I see higher up.
I know it takes time to turn the Titanic, but sometimes I don’t see how things improve and where I am going.
At one point I even started thinking maybe I chose the wrong career entirely.
So I guess my questions are: For people who’ve worked in similar envrionment long time, how did you survive? What advice would you give to younger/newer safety professionals? What eventually made you leave/stayed your company? Is this what a safety career is really about?
ANYTHING is appreciated. Thank you.