The paper we use to frame our discussion is one that has been making the rounds on social media recently. We thought it was important to seize on the opportunity to discuss a work safety issue while it’s top of mind for the public. Topics:What it means when something isn’t peer-reviewed.Why statistics are ever popular.How many workers hours to decimal places.Using a model that weighs underlying variables and randomness.How this study is another nail in the coffin for this question.Practical takeaways. Quotes:“I’ve noticed in Australia, at least, there’s an increasing move to have safety statistics included in annual reports, at least for publicly traded companies.”“And their conclusion was: Almost all of it was explained by randomness.”“If recordable injury rates are used to record performance, then we’re actually rewarding random variation.” Resources:The Statistical Invalidity of TRIR as a Measure of Safety PerformanceFeedback@safetyofwork.com

We dig into how safety promotion is used and its effectiveness within an organization. Often, safety communication is about large-scale behaviors and societal problems. So, we found a paper that focused on workplace safety, which was hard to find. The Effects of an Informational Safety Campaign in the Shipbuilding Industry helps us frame our conversation about the efficacy of safety communication and injury reduction. Tune in to join the conversation! Topics:What we mean by “safety communication campaigns”.Surveying the efficacy of communication campaigns.‘70s-era seat belt campaigns.‘80s-era home safety campaigns.The conclusions from the communication campaign studies.What makes a communication campaign successful.Why the best safety research is often outside the workplace.Message retention rates.Practical takeaways. Quotes:“It doesn’t have to be a poster, it could be broadcast communications, video clips, stuff on a website, even a podcast. But it’s a verbal or written message from the organization…” “Most of this research is conducted on very large scale behaviors, which are things that people generally agree are bad behaviors. So, many of the campaigns that are most effective and are being studied are to do with things like drink driving or cigarette smoking.”“There could well be some more diffuse, more long-term effect here on the climate that our measurements just aren’t capturing…” Resources:The Effects of an Informational Safety Campaign in the Shipbuilding Industry. Feedback@safetyofwork.com

Given that the last two episodes were about theories, we wanted to get back to something more concrete in nature. Hence, the topic of parachutes. We find they are often used in military operations, but are rarely required for civilian aviation. Let’s look at this discrepancy and discuss whether parachutes are actually used to prevent injury or death.Join us for this interesting and somewhat surprising discussion. Topics:Are parachutes for life-risking activities or a life-saving tool?Measuring the usefulness of parachutes.The arguments against evidence-based medicine.When and why you only need a small sample size.Why it’s hard to design an experiment to translate to real-world results.Why we need more experiments on events with direct causal mechanisms.Practical takeaways. Quotes:“...They hide a few key considerations. One of the big ones is, that it’s not really a choice between at the point you have to jump out of a plane, whether to wear a parachute or not; it’s things like, do we make laws that all planes should carry parachutes just in case?”“So it’s not just that more research is needed, it’s that more research is almost guaranteed to reverse the result of this bad study.”“Very often, when it’s come to the practicality of how do we investigate this within an organization, we’ve decided that an experiment is not the best use of our time and resources.” Resources:Parachute Use to Prevent Death and Major Trauma Related to Gravitational ChallengeDoes Usage of a Parachute in Contrast to Free Fall Prevent Major Trauma?Parachute Use to Prevent Death and Major Trauma When Jumping From AircraftFeedback@safetyofwork.com

We frame our conversation around the paper, Safety Climate and Injuries: An Examination of Theoretical and Empirical Relationships. Tune in to hear us talk about retrospective studies, the perception of safety vs. actual safety, and the influence of injuries on safety climate. Topics:Retrospective studies.Organizational and psychological safety climates.Perception of safety and actual safety.Designing research to answer your question.Influence of injuries on safety climate.Contamination.Practical takeaways Quotes:“People who say that they think their company cares about safety, those people generally are safer.”“Most safety climate research assumes that safety climate is a good measure, because it is a predictor of injuries.” “Not enough of these studies measure the strength of climate.” Resources:Safety Climate and Injuries: An Examination of Theoretical and Empirical RelationshipsFeedback@safetyofwork.com

Dr. Neale is a Senior Research Fellow at the Alfred Deakin Institute at Deakin University. There, he studies human geography and cultural anthropology. We use his paper, Fuzzy Boundaries: Simulation and Expertise in Bush Fire Management, to help frame our discussion. Tune in to hear our insights about the safety community and Dr. Neale’s thoughts on bush fire management. Topics:Dr. Neale’s PhD thesis.How he gained access to the F-band community.The tension between people in front-line occupations and safety professionals.Improvising and standardizing.The tension between individuals and bureaucracy.How to be an effective communicator.What happens after a big fire season.Becoming a fire behavior analyst. Quotes:“When you’re interacting with somebody, what is your expertise based in?”“There’s no one way of doing it right and any attempt to wrangle these people, these professionals into being all one type of person, they will resist it.”“The theme that expresses itself in a particular part of people’s work, expresses itself in many other parts of their work; it’s not a contained problem…” Resources:Fuzzy Boundaries: Simulation and Expertise in Bush Fire ManagementFeedback@safetyofwork.com

The podcast discusses the struggle to define successful safety practices, the importance of risk assessment, and the impact of certain safety rules. They explore the roles of PhD candidates and supervisors, the importance of peer review, and the lack of evidence in safety work. The concept of different types of safety work is also discussed, as well as the relationship between industrial manslaughter laws and safety in organizations.

This topic was a request from one of our listeners. Join us as we dig into this frequently asked question and let you know all about academic journals and what you can take away from findings therein. Topics:Explaining academic journals.The ease of accessing journals in the Internet age.What makes a reputable journal.The peer-review process.Why some peer-reviews take longer than others.Qualitative vs. quantitative research.Why submission numbers are going up.Journal shopping and its risks.Practical takeaways. Quotes:“I still sort of think fondly...of doing my PhD and...you could look up the catalogues online. So, you could sit at your desk and find a reference to the paper, but then you’d need to wander the shelves and find the right volume and pull it down and take it to the photocopy machine.”“Sometimes if a paper hasn’t advanced satisfactorily between reviews, then the editor will just make a call…”“You know that you’re going to get peer reviewers that think that research is quantitative.” Resources:Feedback@safetyofwork.com

This discussion is building off last week’s episode where we focused on blame. We thought we would dig a little deeper into how people learn from incidents. We use the paper, What is Learning? A Review of the Safety Literature to Define Learning from Incidents, Accidents, and Disasters, in order to frame our chat. Topics:Single and double-loop learning.Incident learning models.The least effective method of learning. How to make a safety bulletin effective.Why organizational trust is a factor in learning.Why management is important to creating a culture of safety.Lessons Learned About Lessons Learned Systems.Practical takeaways. Quotes:“Learning from accidents is pretty much the oldest type of safety work that exists...and almost from the very start, people have been complaining after accidents about people’s failure to learn from previous accidents.”“This paper really confirms the answer that we gave last week to our question about, ‘does blame sort of get in the way of learning?’ ““You’ve got to admit that you are wrong now in order to become correct in the future.” Resources:What is Learning? A Review of the Safety Literature to Define Learning from Incidents, Accidents, and DisastersFeedback@safetyofwork.com

This is a particularly controversial topic, so we are going to attempt to be as neutral as possible. We refer to the sources, A Review of Literature: Individual Blame vs. Organizational Function logics in Accident Analysis and Antecedents and Consequences of Organizational Silence to help frame our discussion. Topics:Accountability in regards to safety in the workplace.The papers referenced are commentaries, instead of studies.Policy shifting to no-blame reporting systems.A Tale of Two Stories gives two narrative perspectives on one incident.Employee voice.A climate of voice vs. a climate of silence.Creating communication opportunities.How blame can be a default.Practical takeaways from the discussion. Quotes:“ ‘Employee voice’ covers a whole range of behaviors that people can do in organizations that are discretionary.”“Ironically, when they spoke to a number of managers...as part of the study, managers believed they were encouraging employees to speak up, but on the other hand, they’re employing all sorts of informal tactics to silence this dissent.”“There’s so many broader forces in their organization that are seeking resolution...that if you enable an approach where an individual can be blamed, then I think that will be the dominant logic in your investigation…” Resources:A Review of Literature: Individual Blame vs. Organizational Function logics in Accident AnalysisAntecedents and Consequences of Organizational SilenceFeedback@safetyofwork.com

We are fortunate to have a few resources we can reference for today’s topic. Please see below for links to the papers we mentioned in our conversation. Topics:Defining risk compensation.Risk compensation in road traffic.Argument by analogy.What causes people to believe in risk compensation.Why robust data equals a real effect.Practical takeaways. Quotes:“...I think this is the sort of phenomenon that causes people to believe in risk compensation.”“Basically, what they’re saying is, if there was a real effect, it would be robust regardless of how you crunched the data.”“Just because someone does lots of citing of literature or quotes from scientific literature, doesn’t mean that their interpretation of that literature is rigorous and scientific.” Resources:Bicycle Helmets and Risky Behaviour: A Systematic ReviewRisk Compensation Literature - The Theory and EvidenceDriver Approach Behaviour at an Unprotected Railway Crossing Before and After Enhancement of Lateral Sight DistanceThe Effects of Automobile Safety RegulationThe Theory of Risk HomeostasisFeedback@safetyofwork.com