The Safety Culture Myth

The "Safety Culture" Myth

Every organization, regardless of size or industry has a culture.  It may be good, bad, mediocre, mature and well established, or just getting started and trying to find itself; but every organization has one.  Much has been written and discussed about safety culture and the various ways it affects business and people; but, in fact, the term “safety culture” is misleading.

When we think of safety culture, among the first things that pop into our heads is safety performance – is it good or bad?  Are people getting hurt, and how is the organization dealing with it?  Do they seek to prevent occurrences with meaningful and sustainable corrective actions and controls, or do they slap a band aid on it and wait for the next one? 

The truth is, “safety culture” is merely a component part of the overall culture for the organization.  Measures intended to improve safety performance cannot be sustained unless there is a concerted effort to implement them in the context of how they will impact the organization as a whole.  Safety ultimately affects every department and division of an organization, and the skills necessary to make meaningful changes in safety are generally the same one’s that lead a company to higher levels of market and financial performance.

Don’t think of safety culture as a stand-alone marker of your business that is somehow independent of everything else you do.  Rather, think of it as one of many components taking its rightful place in the overall makeup of your approach to success – however you define it.

The High Risk, Low Frequency Incident

What's Waiting for You Around the Corner?

Even the best of companies are not immune from the potential for a catastrophic event stemming from a high risk, low frequency (HRLF) hazard.  Not that such an occurrence is inevitable, but all too frequently we see in the news how another organization is dealing with the tragic loss of life due to such an incident.

The fact is, many organizations are very good at avoiding the obvious hazards and exposures that are part of their day to day operations.  However, in dealing with the obvious, we can lose sight of the unanticipated catastrophic event waiting around the corner.  Two factors that are often prevalent in these incidents:

Low Frequency (limited experience with the exposure and how it evolves into an incident)

No Decision Time (rapidly developing situations that afford little or no time to make informed decisions)

Additionally, these events can be highly complicated with multiple causes, many moving parts with human factors playing a major role (which is what makes safety professionals go prematurely bald) making if very difficult to predict these events with any reliability.  That doesn’t mean we wait patiently for the next one to happen.  It means we never get complacent or concede that there are just some things you can’t change.

A prevailing sense of vulnerability is an essential element in preventing these kinds of incidents.  We may be doing a lot right and have the record to prove it; but … we are not immune as long as residual risk, limited experience and fast moving situations are present – and they will always be present.

Diving Deeper into Causation

One of the hallmarks of a successful safety culture is a clear understanding of causation of incidents.  As the saying goes, if incidents are caused, they can be prevented…

The challenge is to go deep enough in the investigative process to truly understand the actual cause, or “root” cause of the incident – or at least enough about the “probable cause” to succeed in preventing the next one.  In my experience, the easy path to determine causation often results in blaming the employee and discards the harder, less appealing truths about causation: supervisory shortfalls, failures in systems and processes, mistakes in judgement, lack of accountability, poor communication, inaccurate or incomplete hazard assessments, uncontrolled third parties, etc. 

Employee decision making is frequently the culprit on the surface, but what led up to that decision?  How was the employee’s decision influenced by culture or climate, co-workers or management?  Not shooting flaming arrows at management here, but before we condemn the employee, we need to understand the dynamics of his decisions and where that can be improved.  Even if it leads to some uncomfortable truths.

The bottom line is, if we are serious about understanding causation, there is no substitution for a thorough, revealing investigation that uncovers everything about the incident.  Some deference to reality needs to be paid as it pertains to minor incidents, and companies will do what they will with the findings.  But true improvement will prove to be elusive if surface scratches masquerading as investigations is all an organization is inclined to do.

Do your investigations reveal everything about causation?

The Three-Legged Stool

If you’re struggling over how to get started improving your culture and safety performance, try thinking of the effort as a three-legged stool.  All three legs are equally important and without one, the stool will fail.  In no particular order, the legs are:

Safe Places (the physical environment or worker interface to remove hazards)

Safe People (equipping the individual to avoid hazards, often driven by climate & / or culture)

Safe Processes (organizational oversight, sustaining systems and learning to manage hazards)

The concept is not new, but it can sometimes get lost in the clutter of trying to develop sophisticated management systems, or implementing the next, shiny new initiative.  The truth is this doesn’t have to be complicated.  An article recently published in the American Society of Safety Engineers’ professional journal “Professional Safety”, (May, 2016), Daryl Balderson asserted that one must consider the three legs in the context of overlapping hazard attributes and the impact they have from the worker interface to the development of systems and processes. 

For example, housekeeping is emphasized in the safety process as a procedure outlining requirements, a safe person when workers are held to that standard or when trained on expectations.  The safe place occurs when housekeeping has been accomplished to maintain a safe working environment. 

Hazard control in the context of a broad emphasis on exposures and how they affect the workplace is critical to the mitigation of worker injuries and building a positive safety culture.

Assessing Personal Risk Tolerance

Who Are Your Risk Takers?

People respond to risk in vastly different ways. That's why some people like to jump out of perfectly good airplanes and others don't. Knowing how to assess your personal risk tolerance can help you avoid injury on the job, and knowing who your risk takers are in your organization will help you keep your incident rates low.

Everyone has a different perception of what is risky and what isn't. In the workplace, these perceptions are generally based on three factors:

• Personal Factors (level of experience, skill level, state of mind, physical factors)
• Organizational Factors (safety systems and processes, leadership behaviors and influence, co-workers behaviors and influence)
• Situational Factors (standing in the way, cluttered workspace, poor body position, poor preventative maintenance, etc.)

Our understanding of these factors and our personal decision making process while in proximity to a hazard often makes the difference in seeing a positive or negative outcome from that exposure. Terry L. Mathis of ProAct Safety, and one of the most influential thought leaders in safety, has stated that gathering good exposure data can help make a difference in how workers interpret risk. Data that is detailed and accurate will serve to focus worker safety efforts and avoid unnecessary risk taking (TL Mathis, 2015, Humans are Risk Takers, Blog).

Do you know who your risk takers are in your organization? How do you identify them? Making the effort to identify them may help you focus your safety efforts more productively and mitigate unsafe behavior in your workplace.