Competence standards are nowadays employed in many European countries with the European Qualifications Framework defining standardized qualification levels. The paper shows how competence standards for caring about safety may be created and applied to any standardized qualification levels. Their content is derived from an analysis of the concept of safety and from the general scheme of caring about safety. The analysis results in a set of five generic competence standards answering the question posed in the title. The suggested generic standards also cover all qualification levels commonly found in industrial processes. The chosen approach takes as its starting point that proper attitudes represent an essential part of the required competence for caring about safety. This implies that certain inter-personal relationships between those who participate in the process are necessary, when safety is to be thoroughly taken care of. The article explains that such phenomena as workmen not trusting their foremen or a manager not feeling respect for his/her subordinates may have negative implications for safety in an industrial process. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.