We often hear the catch-all term “complacency” but do we really understand what it means?
Complacency is usually defined as “having done a task many times without incident so that the person is no longer attentive to the dangers involved”.
For instance, if every time we moved looking at our phone we ran into a pole, we wouldn’t remain complacent for long, and we would change our behaviour to a safer habit (for example, looking where we are going).
Over the last 50 years, we have managed safety in three traditional ways: • Fix the work environment. • Improve the safety management system. • Get people to think more about safety.
These three approaches have helped us improve safety and we need to continue with them, but research shows they are not enough to prevent many incidents, even serious ones like SIFs.
Today, there is an increasing trend of workplace incidents involving contact with something meant to be there. For example, people running into poles, slipping on stairs with non-slip strips, tripping on furniture and many others.
For these types of incidents, we can’t do much about the work environment (unless we bubble-wrap people), improving the system won’t do much either and getting people to think more about safety is a nice idea, but neuroscience shows that’s not how our brain works.
If we want to improve safety further, we need to get our most valuable asset, our people, to be seasoned players in the personal/occupational safety game.
To do that, we need to understand the different types of complacency and teach them how to manage each type better to reduce their impact.
Neuroscience explains the biological basis of complacency (yes, it’s part of being human) and has identified specific neural circuits responsible for the different types of complacency.
The good news is that each type has a specific solution.
