The Safety of Work

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

We use the paper, Analysing Human Factors and Non-Technical Skills in Offshore Drilling Operations Using FRAM, in order to frame our discussion of this topic.Please let us know if you have any experience with FRAM or similar models. We’d love to hear your feedback. Topics:Using FRAM.Vulnerable Systems Syndrome.STAMP diagrams.How the researchers collected their data.Functions that are common and functions that are outliers.The benefits of implementing a FRAM model.Conclusions drawn by the research paper. Quotes:“Every function of a system is a hexagon and every vertex of that hexagon stands for a different way that, you know, this function can be connected with the next function.”“The authors say that the interviews had just one question, which was ‘how do you perform your job?”“What I like about the use of a FRAM model would be, I think it will allow organizations to narrow that gap between work as imagined and work as done.” Resources:Analysing Human Factors and Non-Technical Skills in Offshore Drilling Operations Using FRAMFeedback@safetyofwork.com

To frame our discussion, we reference the paper What We Talk About When We Talk About HSE and Culture.Please send us your further questions of safety culture, so we can dig into more specifics in later episodes. Topics:How “safety culture” came about in the 1970’s.What Chernobyl has to do with safety culture.Safety culture vs. safety climate.What the paper studied and what it concluded.The factors that influence the definition of safety culture.Who studies and talks about safety culture the least.Types of studies done on safety culture.Practical takeaways. Quotes:“The argument is, really, that culture only matters, because it influences climate. And climate’s what we measure and what we try to change.”“42% of the papers are by engineering authors. 30% of them are by psychology authors. 14% from the health sciences. 10% from the social sciences. 3% from business. Which I find remarkable, given that organizational culture comes out of social science of organizations.”“...That’s remarkable that 30% of the papers weren’t empirical in any sense. They were just people talking about safety culture as if they knew about it or summarizing other people who had talked about it.” Resources:What We Talk About When We Talk About HSE and CultureFeedback@safetyofwork.com

We reference the paper Six Ways of Understanding Leadership Development in order to frame our study.Tune in to hear our discussion and more about this paper. Topics:Defining leadership development.The idea of taking on the mantle of “leader”.The six different ways of understanding leadership.Developing leaders who further the goals of the organization.Stretching people’s views of leadership.Practical take-aways. Quotes:“...And in some sense, they’re almost like stages that leaders go through in their evolution of thinking about themselves like a leader.”“People didn’t fall in a category. THe researchers were just trying to see how far they could stretch people’s views of what leadership [is] and where they stopped.”“Unless you can have an aligned and good understanding of those things, the researchers suggest...there’s not much point in getting started with leadership development activities.” Resources:Six Ways of Understanding Leadership DevelopmentFeedback@safetyofwork.com

We had trouble finding a suitable paper for this topic. Measuring and studying safety leadership often proves difficult. However, we use the paper Examining Attitudes, Norms, and Control Toward Safety Behaviors as Mediators in the Leadership-Safety Motivation Relationship.As an aside, we offer a big “thank you” to those who shared our podcast with others. Our followers and listenership has grown considerably and we greatly appreciate it! Topics:The two ways to improve safety.Why this is a reasonable model for studying the influence of safety.The theory of planned behavior.What you should never claim in your study.The reality of survey research.What mediators are and how they function.Takeaways from the study. Quotes:“They were lamenting in their systematic review that lots of attempts to intervene in behavior change weren’t based on theories.”“So, what they’re really saying is, ‘ok, we know these might be different types of behaviors, but is it sufficient to lump them all together?’ And statistically, yes it is.” “When we say that something ‘mediates’, we’re basically saying it’s like a multiplier in the middle.” Resources:Examining Attitudes, Norms, and Control Toward Safety Behaviors as Mediators in the Leadership-Safety Motivation RelationshipFeedback@safetyofwork.com

We have had a couple of requests for this topic, so even though we couldn’t find a completely suitable paper, we decided to forge ahead anyway. Topics:Explaining Ethnography.Why safety can be politically motivated.Starting your conversations with a personal connection.Why the setting of your conversation matters.How to keep your subjects talking.Setting boundaries.How to react when the interviewee is wrong. Quotes:“...Reflect on all these one-on-one conversations that they had everyday in their workplace and how they could utilize these one-on-one engagements to get better insights and better information that they can use to improve the safety of work in their own organization.”“The second main principle is to get the interviewee talking and to keep them talking.”“I can’t think of another skill that is more useful, Drew, in your role as a safety professional than knowing how to ask good questions.” Resources:Basic Personal Counselling: A Training Manual for CounsellorsQualitative Organizational Research: Core Methods and Current ChallengesFeedback@safetyofwork.com

To frame our conversation, we use one of Drew’s papers to discuss this issue. This paper, Forecasts or Fortune-Telling,was borne out of deep frustration.Tune in to hear our discussion about when or if it is appropriate to listen to experts. Topics:The two questions the paper sought to answer.What we mean by “expertise”.Forecasting.Determining the value of a given expert.Biases in reporting and researching.Super-forecasting.Wisdom of crowds.Better ways to get better answers.Why mathematical models aren’t as helpful as we think.Practical takeaways. Quotes:“Is it best to grab ten oncologists and take the average of their opinions?”“But there is this possibility that there are some people who are better at managing their own cognitive biases than others. And it’s not to do with domain expertise, it’s to do with a particular set of skills that they call ‘super-forecasting’.”“As far as I understand it, most organizations do not use complicated ways of combining expert opinions.” Resources:Forecasts or Fortune-TellingFeedback@safetyofwork.com