The Safety of Work – Détails, épisodes et analyse

We challenge the notion that high injury rates are punished by market forces, as we dig into this article that posits the opposite: that safety should be a performance driver. Our analysis dives deep into the credibility and methodologies of the article, emphasizing the critical role of peer review and the broader body of knowledge.

We'll also scrutinize the use of data as rhetoric versus evidence, focusing on the transparency and rigor of research methods when interviewing executives about safety practices. Is safety merely seen as a compliance issue or a strategic investment? We dissect the methodologies, including participant selection and question framing, to uncover potential biases. Finally, we critique a proposed five-step process aimed at transforming safety into a competitive advantage. From aligning on the meaning of safety to incentivizing employees, we expose significant gaps in academic rigor and alignment with established safety literature. 

This conversation serves as a powerful critique of superficial analyses by those outside the safety science domain, offering listeners critical insights into the complexity of safety management and its potential alignment with organizational goals. 
 

Discussion Points:

• Re-examining the role of safety as a value driver for business
• Comparing contrasting research findings and cautioning about evaluating research
• Data as rhetoric in safety
• Transparency and methodology are crucial in research, especially when interviewing executives about workplace safety
• Executives' perspectives on safety are questioned, research methods are critiqued
• Clarifying claims and performance in business 
• The five-step process for competitive advantage 
• A study on the effectiveness of safety training methods 
• Safety management is complex and requires evidence-based strategies, not superficial analysis or reliance on compliance training
• Strategic value of workplace safety
• Safety's impact on business success is uncertain, but exploring its alignment with organizational goals is important
• Takeaways 
• The answer to our episode’s question: “the short answer is we still don't know!” 
• Like and follow, send us your comments and suggestions!

Quotes:

“The trouble is, then we don't know whether what they're referring to is published research that might be somewhere else that we can look for for the details, or work that they did specifically for this article, or other work that they've done that was just never published.” - Drew

“We've got to be really careful…this is using data as rhetoric, not using data as data.” - Drew

“I wouldn't be surprised that most people see safety as both a cost and as an outcome.”- Drew

“So you've got two-thirds of these companies that don't even have any safety metric, like not even an injury metric or anything that they monitor.” - David

“So we kind of assume business performance means financial performance, but that in itself is never clarified.” - David

Resources:

The Article: Safety Should Be a Performance Driver

Episode 121: Is Safety Good for Business?

The Safety of Work Podcast

The Safety of Work on LinkedIn

Feedback@safetyofwork

From the perceived control in everyday activities like driving, to the dread associated with nuclear accidents, we discuss how emotional responses can sometimes skew our rational assessments of risk. Finally, we explore the ethical and practical challenges of balancing emotional and analytical approaches in risk communication, especially in high-stakes scenarios like terrorism and public safety. The conversation touches on real-world examples, such as the aftermath of the September 11 attacks and the controversial discussions around gun ownership. We emphasize the importance of framing and narrative in conveying risk information effectively, ensuring that it resonates with and is clearly understood by diverse audiences. 
 

Discussion Points:

• Understanding risk perception, Paul Slovic's work and how it has shaped safety practices and decisions in everyday life
• “Affect heuristic” in decision making, influenced by emotions and past experiences, leading to inconsistencies in risk perception.
• Feeling in-control vs. “scary concepts”, risks are perceived differently due to emotions, control, and misunderstandings of probabilities, as seen in driving 
• Risks are assessed differently based on probabilities, outcomes, framing, and context, influencing decision-making
• Other studies, looking at how people see risk, assessing your personal fear or risk from causes of death from cancer to stroke to car accidents to shark attacks vs. your own bathroom
• Balance between emotional and analytical risk evaluation
• Math and statistical examples of how risk is presented and perceived
• Post 9/11 terrorist fears vs. statistics 
• Ethical considerations in communication, and challenges in conveying risk information
• Takeaways 
• The answer to our episode’s question: “the short answer is both” 
• Like and follow, send us your comments and suggestions!

Quotes:

“Risk is analysis where we bring logic, reason, and science or data or facts, and bring it to bear on hazard management.” - David

“There may not be a perfect representation of any risk.” - Drew

“If that's the important bit, then blow it up to the entire slide and get rid of the diagram and just show us the important bit.”- Drew

“It's probably a bit unfair on humans to say that using feeling and emotion isn't a rational thing to do.” - David

“The authors are almost saying here that for some types of risks and situations, risk as a feeling is great.” - David

Resources:

The Paper: Risk as Analysis and Risk as Feelings: Some thoughts about Affect, Reason, Risk and Rationality

The Safety of Work Podcast

The Safety of Work on LinkedIn

Feedback@safetyofwork

Lastly, we delve into the role of leadership in addressing psychosocial hazards, the importance of standardized guidance for remote work, and the challenges faced by line managers in managing remote workers. We wrap up the episode by providing a toolkit for managers to effectively navigate the challenges of remote work, and highlight the need for tailored safety strategies for different work arrangements. 

Discussion Points:

• Different work-from-home arrangements
• Safety needs of work from home
• Challenges of remote worker representation
• Understanding and managing psychosocial risks
• Leadership and managing technical risks
• Remote work challenges and physical presence
• Practical takeaways and general discussion
• Safety strategies for different work arrangements
• The answer to our episode’s question – the short answer is that there definitely isn't a short answer. But this paper comes from a larger project and I know that the people who did the work have gathered together a list of existing resources and toolboxes and, they've even created a few prototype tools and training packages

Quotes:

"There's a risk that we're missing important contributions from workers with different needs, neurodiverse workers, workers with mental health issues, workers with particular reasons for working at home and we’re not going to be able to comment on the framework and how it might affect them." - Drew 

“When organizations' number of incident reports go up and up and up and we struggle to understand, is that a sign of worsening safety or is that a sign of better reporting?” - David

“They do highlight just how inconsistent organisations approaches are and perhaps the need for just some sort of standardised guidance on what is an organisation responsible for when you ask to work from home, or when they ask you to work from home.” - Drew

“I think a lot of people's response to work from home is let's try to subtly discourage it because we're uncomfortable with it, at the same time as we recognise that it's probably inevitable.” - Drew

Resources:

Link to the Paper

The Safety of Work Podcast

The Safety of Work on LinkedIn

Feedback@safetyofwork

Drew isn’t here today and in his stead is Professor David Woods. Tune in to hear his discussion of graceful extensibility and how it applies to the current battle with Covid19.

Topics:

• Unwittingly developing theories.
• Building resilience in organizations.
• Framing his theory in terms of current events.
• How the brain deals with changes.
• What the data from Covid19 will tell us.
• Net adaptive value.
• Saturation and decompensation.
• Proactive learning.
• Reciprocity.

Quotes:

“The simple idea is that we are always vulnerable to surprise. Surprise is ongoing.”

“[The death rate] is going to be correlated with who anticipated...they will have better outcomes for patients.”

“I have to generate, mobilize, and deploy new ways of working, as I start to run out of the capacity to continue.”

“Decompensation in our current case is happening at a society level, at large scale jurisdiction levels; it’s happening at hospital systems levels…”

Resources:

Woods, D. D. (2018). The theory of graceful extensibility: basic rules that govern adaptive systems. Environment Systems and Decisions, 38(4), 433-457.

Feeback@safetyofwork.com

We use the following articles to frame our discussion: In Their Profession’s Service and Influencing Organizational Decision-Makers.

Topics:

• The constant frustration of being a safety professional.
• Rational persuasion and other forms of influence.
• Publishing outside traditional safety journals.
• Why it can be hard to define a safety professional’s role.
• The optics of good connections.
• Adaptive framing.
• Why “by any means necessary” is not the key to success.
• Playing the long game.

Quotes:

“If you survey CEO’s...they want safety practitioners to have these communication skills, ability to build relationships…”

“There is no pattern between these companies and their economic performance and their safety performance…”

“There’s some really good advice there...for safety professionals to think about the long game.”

Resources:

Daudigeos, T. (2013). In their profession's service: how staff professionals exert influence in their organization. Journal of Management Studies, 50(5), 722-749.

Madigan, C., Way, K., Capra, M., & Johnstone, K. (2020). Influencing organizational decision-makers–What influence tactics are OHS professionals using?. Safety Science, 121, 496-506.

Cialdini, R. B., & Cialdini, R. B. (1993). Influence: The psychology of persuasion. Harper Business.

Cohen, A. R., & Bradford, D. L. (2011). Influence without authority. John Wiley & Sons.

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Topics:

• Drew’s recently published paper and how it relates to this topic.
• Vaccinations and the current wave of anti-vaccination bias.
• Testing the effects of stories vs. facts.
• Alternative beliefs.
• Why we think certain claims are nonsense.

Quotes:

“They found that the one that has a story of someone whose child has had measles along with the photo with the measles, had a very strong effect on attitude change…”

“Typically, as safety professionals, we often want to influence a change in what people are doing in the organization, be it managers or workers.”

“I would ask what sort of workplace are you running that the difference between whether people are working at heights safely...is a tiny increment in how scared they are of working at heights?”

Resources:

Horne, Z., Powell, D., Hummel, J. E., & Holyoak, K. J. (2015). Countering antivaccination attitudes. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 112(33), 10321-10324.

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Topics:

• Divulging our potential conflicts of interest.
• Hindsight bias.
• The four different mental processes used in assessing accidents.
• How the raft ride worked on a good day.
• The first river raft fatality on record.
• Various river raft incidents on record.
• The factors that lead to the accident at Dreamworld.
• Potential conclusions from this case.

Quotes:

“When I was reflecting after this incident,  I don’t remember a lot of safety conversation at all.”

“There was a number of operational incidents associated with these rides; to do with, kind of, like, spacing and separation of rafts on the ride.”

“I think in this particular case, we can almost see the way that hindsight bias is causing the selectivity.”

Resources:

Coroner's Inquest into Dreamworld Incident

Hawkins, S. A., & Hastie, R. (1990). Hindsight: Biased judgments of past events after the outcomes are known. Psychological bulletin, 107(3), 311.

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We have just co-authored a paper with two other researchers and it examines the big picture of safety science. We don’t usually like to plug ourselves, but we’re very excited about this particular accomplishment. We use his paper, A Manifesto for Reality-Based Safety Science, to frame our discussion.

Topics:

• Why practitioners shouldn’t tune out this podcast.
• Evidence-based medicine as a reform movement.
• Studying work, not accidents.
• Investigate and theorize before measuring.
• The lag in safety science.
• Forecasting theories.
• How safety knowledge is not fixed.

Quotes:

“There was a strong perception that there was a lot of evidence about what worked and didn’t work, that wasn’t making its way into practice.”

“When you study an accident, all of the analysis that you do is necessarily driven by counterfactual reasoning and hindsight bias.” 

“If the researchers are influencing it, if the researchers are controlling it, if the researchers are doing it, it stops being a case study and it becomes action research…”

Resources:

Feedback@safetyofwork.com

We chose to use two papers to frame our discussion. Those papers are Construction Safety Training Using Immersive Virtual Reality and Comparing Immersive Virtual Reality and PowerPoint as Methods for Delivering Safety Training.

Let us know if and how you are using Virtual Reality in your business.

Topics:

• VR research is a mixed bag.
• How VR training works.
• Advantages to VR training.
• How VR training can be used more effectively.
• Outsiders publishing in safety journals.

Quotes:

“It was fairly targeted towards the outcome they want from normal types of training.”

“It does suggest that if we are going to spend more money on this...then the way to follow up is down that idea of simulating particular work tasks…”

“It’s like watching the Phantom Menace and then watching the Phantom Menace with 3D goggles and deciding that 3D goggles are no good, because they didn’t make it into a better movie.”

Resources:

Sacks, R., Perlman, A., & Barak, R. (2013). Construction safety training using immersive virtual reality. Construction Management and Economics, 31(9), 1005-1017.

Leder, J., Horlitz, T., Puschmann, P., Wittstock, V., & Schütz, A. (2019). Comparing immersive virtual reality and powerpoint as methods for delivering safety training: Impacts on risk perception, learning, and decision making. Safety science, 111, 271-286.

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We use the paper When Redundant On-Screen Text in Multimedia Technical Instruction can Interfere with Learning to frame our discussion.

Topics:

• This problem existed before Microsoft.
• Do presentation slides help you communicate?
• Text on slides serving as a distraction.
• What the cognitive load theory tells us.
• Changing one’s approach to presentations.

Quotes:

“I think people genuinely think it’s a good way to convey information.”

“The cognitive load theory is suggesting, in this case, that the worst thing to do is to give them text...and audio at the same time.”

“It definitely doesn’t apply that diagrams plus audio is bad.”

Resources:

Kalyuga, S., Chandler, P., & Sweller, J. (2004). When redundant on-screen text in multimedia technical instruction can interfere with learning. Human factors, 46(3), 567-581.

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