Today’s guest on the Culturally Intelligent Safety Professional is Dr. Marilyn Hubner. Dr. Hubner is a safety professional, academic and manager of the Australian Institute of Health and Safety’s OHS Body of Knowledge. https://www.ohsbok.org.au/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/marilyn-hubner-7146bb35/

Marilyn's career spans being a tradesperson, she spent time in the Australian Defence Force and has worked as an educator. Marilyn was elected as a Health and Safety Rep and her safety career grew from there resulting in a role with the National Safety Council as an instructor

We discuss whether cultural intelligence has a place in the safety curriculum, which Marilyn agrees it does however she highlights a slight roadblock in achieving this and that’s where does it fit? We heard a similar comment in episode 2 when we asked Chris Peace a similar question and got a similar answer. In Chris’s case the roadblock was having to comply with IOSH requirements around course design. Marilyn’s response was a little broader in that there doesn’t seem to be an accepted component part for what we might call Essential Skills or Power Skills, she suggested that its almost an expectation of educational institutions that people already have these Essential Skills like leadership, communication, influencing, and empathy all of which contribute to being more culturally intelligent.

Marilyn touched on one of the skills of those who are culturally intelligent and that was adaptability when she discussed arriving in Vietnam to teach a masters class to find no presentation technology available and had to resort to some maybe less traditional ways to get her message across.  She also reflects a story where technology was a significant part of a programme she was delivering and this was a roadblock for a student from an age perspective, someone who wasn’t computer literate and again other methods of communication had to be used. 

Marilyn encourages safety professionals to incorporate diversity in their presentations including pictures, videos etc, suggesting we represent the diversity that’s actually in our workplaces. She suggests that we include learning about cultural differences in our professional development plans.