The Safety of Work

We use the paper, How Institutions Enhance Mindfulness, to help frame our discussion.Topics:Mindful organizing.How the researchers conducted their survey and how it affected results.When the regulators are from the government.Four key activities that enhance safety.Why the org in the study leaned towards punishment rather than education.The two disparate views within the paper.How to create an environment that supports good decisions.Shifting blind reinforcement to reasonable reinforcement.Quotes:“So, they talked about this collective mindfulness as emerging out of the five principles of high-reliability organization theory.”“I was trying to interpret how much of this was down to national culture and how much of it was down to the research itself. And it certainly appears that in this situation, the primary regulator...the government regulator is the police.”“Initially operators must learn and follow the rules. But to function effectively as operators, they can’t mindlessly follow the rules, because the rules are sometimes irrelevant or unhelpful, leading to unnecessary violations.” Resources:Kudesia, R. S., Lang, T., & Reb, J. (2020). How Institutions Enhance Mindfulness: Interactions between external regulators and front-line operators around safety rules. Safety science, 122, 104511.Feedback@safetyofwork.com

We use the papers to frame our discussion: A Systematic Review of the Effectiveness, Compliance, and Critical Factors for Implementation of Safety Checklists in Surgery; Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of the Effect of the World Health Organization Surgical Safety Checklist on Post-Operative Complications; and The Effects of Safety Checklists in Medicine.Tune in to hear our thoughts on this potentially life or death issue.Topics:The good reputation of checklists.Equipment Failure.The decrease of information loss.Do checklists slow things down?How closely checklists are followed.The rhyme of reason for checklists.Quotes:“Checklists are one of those things that have been associated with safety for a long time and associated in a way that gives them quite a good name.”“Lots of stuff being recorded as positively improving with the introduction of a checklist.”“If you can’t convince a multidisciplinary team that this belongs on the checklist, because they all agree there is a clear link between this item and a particular accident that they all know about, then you don’t get to put it on the checklist.”Resources:Borchard, A., Schwappach, D.L., Barbir, A., & Bezzola, P. (2012).A Systematic Review of the Effectiveness, Compliance, and Critical Factors for Implementation of Safety Checklists in Surgery Annals of Surgery, 256, 925–933. Bergs, J., Hellings, J., Cleemput, I., Zurel, Ö., De Troyer, V., Van Hiel, M., ... & Vandijck, D. (2014). Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of the Effect of the World Health Organization Surgical Safety Checklist on Post-Operative Complications. British Journal of Surgery, 101(3), 150-158.Thomassen, Ø., Storesund, A., Søfteland, E., & Brattebø, G. (2014). The Effects of Safety Checklists in Medicine: a systematic review. Acta Anaesthesiologica Scandinavica, 58(1), 5-18.Feedback@safetyofwork.com

We use David’s paper, Benefactor or Burden, to frame our discussion today.Topics:The distinction between role and identity.The stereotypes about the safety profession.Saturation.What to consider when hiring safety employees.Tertiary education.Change and the journey of safety.The values of safety professionals.What is important to talk about, when talking about safety professionals.Quotes:“Very few safety people describe themselves as bureaucrats.”“...Just that word, ‘Professional’. It tended to be the case that people who had tertiary education thought of that as being important as part of being a professional.”“We value belonging and involvement, but we also require authority to do some of our role.”Resources:Provan, D. J., Dekker, S. W., & Rae, A. J. (2018). Benefactor or Burden: Exploring the professional identity of safety professionals. Journal of safety research, 66, 21-32. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsr.2018.05.005Feedback@safetyofwork.com

We use the paper, What Constitutes Effective Manual Handling Training, in order to frame our discussion. The paper is a systematic review that looks at fifty three intervention studies performed over a number of years.Topics:Why training is the cornerstone of the workplace.Why it’s important to evaluate training.The results of the various studies discussed within today’s paper.The varying qualities of studies.Finding what type of manual training is effective.Quotes:“The idea of having some sort of formalized weighting system, is it gets around the accusation of researcher bias.”“There’s maybe something to say that some of that training was actually counter to the way that we now understand, maybe, that people can exert safe and maximal force.”“If you do have residual risk leftover...person-task-fit is directly relevant around this residual risk…” Resources:Feeback@safetyofwork.com

Dave is joined by special guest, Dr. Laura Maguire, a researcher at the Cognitive Systems Engineering Lab at Ohio State University. Her recent research pertains to the topic at hand. Tune in to hear our informative discussion. Topics:● Dr. Maguire’s personal relationship to safety.● Exploring coordinated joint activity in the tech industry.● The difficulty of doing research in the natural laboratory.● What Dr. Maguire noticed during her research.● Why breakdowns in common ground occur.● Why a phone call can involve effortful cognitive work. Quotes:“In cognitive systems engineering, we’re most interested in what are the generalized patterns of cognition and of interpreting the world…”“Doing research in what we call the ‘natural laboratory’ or trying to examine cognition in the wild, is really, really hard.”“Tooling is never going to solve all of the problems, right?”Resources:Feedback@safetyofwork.com

We use the paper, Embracing Complexity, to frame our discussion. Tune in to hear our chat about this important issue. Topics:The definition of a team.What unit to study when researching teams.Compositional and structural features.Mediating mechanisms.Average member attributes and how they contribute to performance.How diversity affects teams.Fault lines.How to measure a team’s success.The positive effect of innovation. Quotes:“A topic that comes up a lot in the research is virtual teams. Who would have guessed that teams meeting over Zoom was going to be a topical and relevant hot-button topic?”“...The research suggests that functional diversity, as well as individual educational diversity have positive relationships with team performance.”“There were some studies that said if there is a general climate in the organization around innovation, then the team will display more innovative characteristics and things like that.” Resources:Mathieu, J. E., Gallagher, P. T., Domingo, M. A., & Klock, E. A. (2019). Embracing Complexity: Reviewing the past decade of team effectiveness research. Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior, 6, 17-46.Feedback@safetyofwork.com

We use the following papers to frame our discussion: Development and Test of a Model Linking Safety Specific Transformational Leadership and Occupational Safety and Contrasting the Nature and Effects of Environmentally Specific and General Transformational Leadership. Topics:How leadership is studied.The two-part study conducted in Development and Test.Are environmentally specific and general transformational leadership two different things?How the study in Contrasting the Nature and Effects was conducted.Safety leadership vs. leadership/Why good leadership leads to good safety practices. Quotes:“How much do these things vary and how much do our explanations for these things explain why they vary? And the answer is, they don’t.”“Don’t start measuring and tinkering with the statistical relationships between things until you’ve actually pinned down what those things are.”“I strongly believe that we can’t easily change the values that people hold.” Resources:Barling, J., Loughlin, C., & Kelloway, E. K. (2002). Development and Test of a Model Linking Safety Specific Transformational Leadership and Occupational Safety. Journal of applied psychology, 87(3), 488. DOI: 10.1037//0021-9010.87.3.488Robertson, J. L., & Barling, J. (2017). Contrasting the Nature and Effects of Environmentally Specific and General Transformational Leadership. Leadership & Organization Development Journal.Feeback@safetyofwork.com

Dave isn’t here today. Instead, Drew speaks directly with the author of the paper we intended to use to frame our discussion. Tune in to hear his discussion with Tanya Hewitt.  Topics:Discomfort with non-technical topics.Why some people are seasoned users of reporting systems.Pride in being a fixer.Feedback loops in reporting systems.Questioning the value of given instructions.Why qualitative data can be helpful. Quotes:“If people were very seasoned users of the reporting system, we’d want to really understand, ‘how did they become seasoned users?’ ”“A lot of professionals: That’s where they derive their professional pride, from being able to fix problems.”“[Reporting systems] are complex sociotechnical constructs.” Resources:Hewitt, T. A., & Chreim, S. (2015). Fix and forget or fix and report: a qualitative study of tensions at the front line of incident reporting. BMJ Qual Saf, 24(5), 303-310.Feedback@safetyofwork.com

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.Feedback@safetyofwork.com