Safety is my touchstone for a productive and active life.
Position and key responsibilities with SafeStart
Since the end of 2017, Christoph has managed SafeStart Europe, combining his experience in workplace safety as Consultant and Coach with his role as a visionary Business Leader. His main responsibility is to manage the European business but also to work with key clients to help them develop their capabilities to improve their safety performance whilst implementing SafeStart.
Christoph’s past experiences
Christoph has worked for 20 years in sales and marketing and for over ten years in the safety (training & consulting) industry across Europe, Russia and North Africa. Next to the more technical aspects of workplace safety, he focused mainly on the cultural side of workplace safety. Christoph worked as Principal Consultant and Client Engagement Manager alongside his team of Consultants and Project Managers. Christoph has also been Regional Sales Manager in South Europe and North Africa. He was Business Director for Russia & CIS countries based in Moscow, and he has worked in Morocco.
Christoph works for SafeStart because…
having experienced the strengths but also weaknesses of classical safety management systems (e.g., neglect of the human factor), meeting Larry Wilson led Christoph to focus on the ‘human side of safety’ – in the workplace and beyond – and then join SafeStart.
Safety beyond workplace
Christoph’s educational background is Business Administration. Having lived and worked in Russia, he enjoys travelling to remote places in that country (e.g., Kamchatka, Altai in Southern Siberia, the Caucasus). In his spare time, Christoph enjoys skiing, mountaineering, cycling and water sports, with SafeStart making an impact on how he participates. He also plays the saxophone in a Big Band that specialises in swing, jazz, funk and blues.
Combining classical workplace safety approaches with coaching of individuals on personal safety awareness
Christoph has worked and interacted with hundreds of people in management and at the shop-floor level. He not only scoped out safety management projects with management and coached leadership teams alongside the project but also personally accompanied shop-floor teams during implementation of technical and behaviour-based workplace safety. Based on his experiences, for SafeStart, he mainly acts as
- Advisor & coach to leadership teams
- Speaker at conferences and (internal) client safety events
- Manager of SafeStart Europe
His current speaking topics are “Unlocking the Code to Human Error” and “The Human Factor”. He also engages in discussions around “The Third Dimension of Risk Assessment”.