Education vs. Experience: Why the Best Safety Professionals Have Both
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By Abbie Geigle
An incident happens on a jobsite. A worker is injured.
The investigation starts, and the question is asked: Why did this occur?
Too often, the answer comes quickly:
“The employee failed to follow procedure.”
It’s a familiar conclusion—and an easy one. But it rarely explains why the procedure wasn’t followed in the first place.
Two Perspectives, Two Very Different Outcomes
A safety person with strong field experience but little formal education may focus on the visible behavior. From that viewpoint, the employee’s action—or inaction—becomes the root cause. The fix is usually more rules, more reminders, or discipline.
A safety professional who combines field experience with education and credentials like the ASP or CSP approaches the same incident differently. They ask deeper questions:
- Was the worker adequately trained for the task?
- Were they familiar with the equipment or process?
- Were procedures realistic for the conditions?
- Did production pressure influence decision-making?
This approach recognizes that incidents don’t happen in isolation—they occur within systems.
Understanding How Work Really Happens
Field experience is critical in safety, especially in the trades. It builds credibility and helps safety professionals understand the realities of the job: tight schedules, changing conditions, and competing priorities.
But education adds another layer. It introduces concepts like human factors, organizational influences, and system failures. It teaches safety professionals how to analyze patterns, not just individual actions.
Most importantly, it reinforces a core truth:
Employees do not come to work looking to make unsafe decisions or get hurt.
When something goes wrong, it’s often because the system failed to support safe work.
When Safety Becomes the Root Cause
With both experience and education, safety professionals are more likely to reach difficult—but accurate—conclusions. In many cases, the true root cause isn’t the worker at all. It’s:
- Inadequate or ineffective training
- Poor task planning
- Unclear expectations
- Normalized shortcuts driven by production demands
Sometimes, the real finding is that safety did not adequately prepare the worker for the task.
Moving Past the Debate
The industry spends too much time arguing education versus experience. The better path is clear:
- Work in the trades and learn how the job is truly done
- Decide if safety is the right career
- Pursue a degree and certifications with intention
- Apply that knowledge to real-world conditions
The Bottom Line
Field experience grounds safety in the reality of how work is actually done, while education provides the tools to understand why things go wrong and how to fix them. When safety professionals have both, investigations go deeper, systems improve, and incidents are far less likely to repeat.
