From the time Jimmy Hughes joined a firm cleaning up hazardous waste at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge Reservation, where materials for atomic weapons were developed during World War II, he was looking for a way to prove himself.
The youngest person on his crew, Hughes realized he had found what he needed when he saw how highly his new employer, United Cleanup Oak Ridge LLC, valued professional certification.
He got to work, first achieving certification by the Board of Certified Safety Professionals as a Safety Trained Supervisor Construction and, eventually, as a Certified Safety Professional, the organization’s gold standard.
Along the way, United Cleanup Oak Ridge selected Hughes for its Rising Senior Leaders Program and promoted him to deputy health and safety manager, a role in which he oversees crews moving large amounts of soil contaminated by wartime production.
Read More: The Path To Becoming A Safety Professional: Certifications and Steps
Certification “gives everyone the ability to voice a concern or raise a complaint or handle issues that may, in another industry, be seen as outside of their area of expertise,” Hughes says in a post on the board’s website. “It gives them that ability to create a circle of influence and create change, then ultimately accomplish the goal of safe execution of work, and what that generally leads to is safe execution of work under budget and ahead of schedule.”
Big Paycheck Boost
Hughes’ experience illustrates two of the benefits of certification most commonly cited by safety professionals: career advancement coupled with the skills to strengthen employers’ workplace safety programs.
Safety officers who obtain at least one certification typically earn $20,000 a year more than peers without any, according to a 2020 survey by the National Safety Council and the Board of Certified Safety Professionals.
Read More: 3 Safety Training Courses
The not-for-profit board collaborates with both the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the nation’s top workplace safety regulator, and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, a branch of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that researches work-related injuries and illnesses and works to prevent them.
Personnel who obtained the board’s Certified Safety Professional credential, the designation with the highest experience and education requirements, have typically boosted their salaries by $30,000 a year, the survey found.
The median salary for safety professionals at the time was $98,000, according to the survey.
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