In this post we talk about high income skills if you want to succeed as a safety professional. Let’s understand KATE first. The basic requirements of a successful health and safety career is “KATE”, that is Knowledge, Ability, Training and Experience embodied in a level 3 safety qualification, experience on the job whether through internship or actual employment, and a good amount of technical know-how from competence-based training. These requirements help safety professionals to gain equal footing to compete for jobs. But beyond KATE is the extra mile only a few are willing to travel.

Maintaining Career Growth on the Extra Mile

“KATE” will get you the job, however, to gain consistent career growth, the extra mile for competitive advantage must be your key focus. There is no traffic jam on the extra mile, and this simply means, there is no competition. The extra mile is the only way to stay on top of your career.

So what is the extra mile all about?

The extra mile is all about Continual Professional Development (CPD) which creates opportunity to learn from others, benchmark your health and safety competence, improve your skill, knowledge and expertise through development and extra curriculum activities, and most importantly applying the knowledge and experiences acquired to create solutions to solve real problems.

The extra mile requires putting yourself out there and standing out from the crowd through higher learning like a level 6 safety qualification, making yourself relevant in safety conferences, safety discussion groups, participating in webinars, safety podcasts, engaging with communities of safety professionals and partaking in extra curriculum activities for added value.

The extra mile will make you relevant and become a household name to attract a wide range of opportunities. 

Creating Value with Income Skills

Now, let’s look at value creation in employment setting; safety is a staff function that supports other departments to perform their jobs safely. The safety role supports departments and helps organizations to fulfil their health and safety obligations relating to the solutions they are offering. The salary of a safety professional depends on how much the employer values a safety professional’s support.

Same with value creation on the extra mile, you on the other hand determine your own value. You get to create your own offers and place your own price tags on them.  Your ability to justify your value depends on the perceived value you have created on the extra mile and offer to an organization.

Also, to create wealth with safety, a safety professional must be able to drive safety as a business unit, which is a higher level of value creation. As a requirement, a safety professional must think like an entrepreneur and have add-on skills. Generating wealth with safety in the world of business largely depends on your ability to combine “KATE” with other disciplines to create value in exchange for money. You will need a multidisciplinary skill that solves real societal problems in order to create value that can be monetized to generate revenue.

Revenue thrives on value creation, value creation thrives on problem solving and problem solving thrives on multidisciplinary skill – Selorm Ametewee, IDipNEBOSH, CEO of SHEQXEL

List of High Income Skills (Add-ons to “KATE”) that Generate Growth and Wealth

As a safety professional or an entrepreneur, it is important to leverage multidisciplinary skills i.e., problem solving skills which many don’t have to gain competitive advantage in your career or chosen niche. A skill that gives competitive advantage is a high income skill. Often times, we stick to one income skill which only offers equal playing field for everybody to compete.

There’s no extra mile with one income skill. It is important to focus on high income skills by adding on unique skills that make the difference in the job market or your chosen niche. Think about this; a safety professional who has been able to develop a good public speaking skill has the opportunity to create value through safety podcast, share content on YouTube, speak at safety conferences and can monetize the value created to generate revenue.

These are a few add on skills you can develop to create wealth in your career or chosen safety niche.

Microsoft Excel – Good Data Analytical Skill

This is a great add-on skill for those who want to develop analytical tools and sell on their own website or on Eloquens, the only international online marketplace with a health and safety category. This skill also sets you apart from the rest, as you are able to stay in charge of health and safety data analytics for your prospective employers. I for one, am able to develop health and safety solutions using Microsoft excel and I walk into every new job, confident that I’ve got my own support tools to hit the ground running.

PowerPoint – Good Presentation Skill

PowerPoint has a huge market especially for health and safety presentations. PowerPoint as an add-on skill to safety “KATE” will enable you to develop pre-built PowerPoint slides to create value for safety professionals who want to make their job easier. You are able to create better presentations to wow your audience in safety forums, making you indispensable and also sell them as templates to others. I am currently learning how to build and add value to Powerpoint templates for my e-commerce website.

Software – Good Use or Development Skill

Software development or usage skill can complement your safety “KATE” to come up with a great HSE software that offer value to companies to create wealth or become valuable to an employer as an expert in using a good number of safety software. I have good use of Synergi, Microsoft Office Suite, Power Bi Desktop, IFS and other web based safety management systems. I am able to create dashboards using Power Bi Desktop and this gives me competitive advantage. I am currently planning to get into data science and full stack software development as my next skill.

Graphic Designing  – Good Designing Skill

This is a great add-on skill relevant for content creation. Every business has a safety responsibility and certainly want to communicate their commitment to safety and to promote their business. In these respects, they would need promotional materials for safety and their business such as safety brochures, safety posters, safety stickers and infographics. With a skill in graphic designing in addition to safety “KATE”, you can create safety related content for your employer or create digital products and sell either on your website or a marketplace like Eloquens or directly to businesses to cater for their needs. Currently I use Canva for creating basic designs for posting on social media, thereby internalizing the cost of outsourcing.

Videography – Good Video Making Skill

From corporate safety videos to tutorial videos and vlogs on YouTube, video making skill is essential and yet grey because not many safety professionals see opportunities in this field. To be able to execute and develop video content on safety, you don’t only need to have good safety knowledge, you also need video editing and content creation skill. A lot of online courses are created using screen recording and editing software. I personally use Camtasia for all my screen recordings and video editing for my youtube channel and marketing promos. 

Photography – Good Photography Skill

Learning photography from the safety standpoint can help you to focus on safety stock images for creating websites, and promotional content. You can sell your safety stock images on your own website or marketplaces like shutterstock, adobe stock, unsplash, freepic and the like. I sometimes wish I was into photography right from the onset of my career, so that I could take very quality shot of safety stock photos and videos, and monetize on shutterstock. I guess, I can’t be jack of all trade.

Communication Skill

Safety professionals who have been able to develop a great communication and public speaking skills can create value, attention and audience through the sharing of educational content, vlogging on YouTube, speaking at conferences, doing safety podcasts, hosting webinars, etc. to promote safety and any other business. This is a skill I am still developing for my YouTube content, webinars and future podcast. I have come to realize communication skill is everything and the most important tool for marketing yourself and your business.

Teaching Skill

Safety professionals who have been able to develop good teaching skill can better create value in the safety training niche to create wealth. Do you have good teaching skills for NEBOSH Diploma, NEBOSH IGC, NEBOSH IOGC, Incident Investigation and all other safety courses? If you do, then you can digitize it by creating online courses on your website or self-tuition marketplaces like Udemy.  I can’t overemphasize how rewarding it is to create an information digital product and sell it a million times to different audience.

Writing Skill

A safety professional with a great add-on skill of writing can carve a niche in safety blogging with dovetailed opportunities for building traction and authority in order to benefit from selling display ads on his or her website. I am still improving my writing skill as I have started writing quite a number of blog posts lately, like this one you are reading. Writing is just part of content creation and can’t be dispensed with.

Website Designing or Development Skill

Website creating and designing these days are just plug and play. No serious level of technical skill is required. As an add-on skill to safety “KATE”, a safety professional can better create and manage website content and have total control of hosting some unique content. You are able to also create website for safety business models and sell them. I have created and currently managing 6 websites; SHEQXEL, HSE Retail Shop, HSE Market GH, Mina Safeti, and SHEQPGHOnline.

Search Engine Optimization Skill

SEO is everything for generating organic traffic. This even applies to our Linkedin profiles, where we ought to stuff our profile with the relevant keywords for recruiters to find us. As an add-on skill for a safety professional who is managing his own website, you are better positioned to add value to your niche by producing content that has high search volume keywords that are able to rank high on google in order to generate organic leads for your business. From my search engine optimized content on this very website for instance, I have been able to rank a few keywords on page one of google and they are driving me a good amount of organic traffic. 

Digital Marketing Skill

Good knowledge and skill in digital marketing in addition to your safety knowledge gives good amount of control in terms of marketing yourself on social media and internalizing the cost of advertising for your safety business. A good digital marketing skill will influence how you promote yourself on social media by posting content to create attention on your profile. You can also effectively run your Facebook ads, LinkedIn ads or Google ads to get more leads and customers if you are business owner. This is something I am still learning the hard way and practicing fairly with a careful amount of ad spend, so that I don’t throw money away for not optimizing my ads. I am also learning the art of social media postings.

Conclusion

A multidisciplinary skill is essential for competitive advantage. These are high income skills which not many have and can generate high revenue. Whatever safety “KATE” you have, make sure to add-on some additional high income skills, and make sure to be on the extra mile -because that is certainly where there’s no traffic to gaining competitive advantage in your safety career and chosen safety niche for wealth creation.

Sel 💫 at SHEQXEL. Connect with Sel 💫 on LinkedIn

If you think I missed anything or you have a different perspective of this, share your comment below.