ARE YOU AN EXTREME PROFESSIONAL?

We don’t normally expect safety and health professionals to show up at ESPN’s “X Games”
with skateboards in hand, ready to perform 750-degree gyrations five stories above the
half-pipe.

First off, safety and health pros would never trust those flimsy skater’s helmets. And the
lack of fall protection is appalling.

But an article in the December 2006 issue of the Harvard Business Review could cast many
safety and health pros in an unaccustomed light. The article, “Extreme Jobs,” was based on
a trend researchers noted toward more “extreme work” in corporate management positions.
And indeed, along with financial analysts, investment bankers, and federal prosecutors, the
safety and health manager of a BP oil platform with 80 workers in the North Sea is profiled
in the HBR piece.

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TEST YOURSELF

So how do you know if you qualify as an extreme job-holder? Take the following quiz, based
on work characteristics listed in the HBR article and a few we added ourselves. All questions
are answered “yes” or “no.”

1. The flow of your work is often unpredictable.

2. You work at a fast clip and face numerous tight deadlines.
3. Some of the work you do, in the past would have been handled by a junior staffer
less experienced. But alas, payrolls have been pared and those junior people are now
employed at UPS stores and Wal-Marts.
4. You do not have a secretary or full-time assistant to help with administration.
5. The broad scope of your work makes you wonder if you’re drilling down deep enough
to be truly effective.
6. You are on-call 24/7.
7. Your job entails lots of travel.
8. You put in at least ten hours a day at the office.
9. You routinely check your office emails in the evening at home.
10. You have not taken a two-week vacation since you were ten years old.
11. You commute to your job more than 30 miles (one-way) each day.
12. You have multiple bosses, whom you rarely see.
13. You have a passion for what you do, and your job is not defined by the compensation
alone. You love the challenge of your work.
14. You don’t feel victimized or exploited by your company; rather your job is a prime
source of pride and your personal identity.
15. Speaking of identity, your kids would have difficulty picking you out of a line-up
because you’re gone before they awake in the morning and you return at night after
they’re asleep.
16. In fact, you do indulge in extreme-type sports — skydiving, snowboarding,
triathlons, surfing, mountaineering, bungee-jumping. You enjoy a good strong surge
of adrenaline.
17. You’re too tired at the end of the day to say anything of depth or meaning to your
spouse or partner.
18. You eat too much, sleep too little, and get your exercise by dashing in to Starbucks.
 19. You work for a multinational corporation.
20. You can’t imagine doing anything else.

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DEGREES OF EXTREME

OK. Total up your number of “yes” answers. If you’ve said “yes” to more than 15 questions,
you can safely say you are taking the safety and health profession to the extreme. You also
might want to schedule a check-up with your family doc and say hello to the kids.

If you answered “yes” to between 10 and 15 of the questions, consider yourself borderline
extreme. If another merger or acquisition comes along – and you survive – you might take
extremity to the next level.

If you answered “yes” to 5-9 questions you could well be a hard-charger, but fall short of an
elite extremist. You probably are on a first-name basis with your neighbors and rarely
return business phone calls while on vacation.

If you answered “yes” to less than five of these questions, perhaps you’re a work-life
balance counselor in your spare time.

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EVOLUTION OF EXTREME JOBS

Make no mistake, say the authors of “Extreme Jobs,” the trendline points to more and more
jobs becoming extreme. For this we can thank globalization, the flat organization, the 1950s
“Ozzie and Harriett” work-life model fading in the rear-view mirror, new levels of
connectivity due to communications technology, the rise of the knowledge worker who
doesn’t necessarily lay down his tools at day’s end, rather extreme corporate values
regarding competitiveness, and cubicle-land replacing the town square as the place where
we find most of our best friends, the best gossip, and the best jokes.

Yes, safety and health pros are by nature cautious, thoughtful, often conservative and
family-first types. But beware. You could be heading for an extreme make-over.

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Dave Johnson is the ISHN E-News editor. He can be reached at djsafe@bellatlantic.net,

(610) 666-0261; fax (610) 666-1906.