Introducing a positive safety culture has always presented a challenge for organisations. It doesn’t matter how many systems or processes or procedures are introduced; these often have very little bearing on how “safe” an organisation is.
Almost always, it comes down to the behaviours of the individuals and the broader (often unspoken) messages that the organisation sends about safety.
Organisationally, there’s plenty of research around the necessity for commitment from the top, consistency of message, keeping each other accountable with just in time feedback and about modeling good behaviours. There’s also significant research that one of the key indicators of positive safety is the number of “safety interactions” an employee has with their direct supervisor. So it comes from the top, but needs to be the bosses at all levels actually getting out there interacting with their people regarding safety, not just talking about it.
But I wanted to talk about the “broken windows” research that is referred to Gladwell’s “The Tipping Point” and again in Adam Fraser’s “The Third Space”. Fraser describes it as this:
“Put simply, the theory states that if a building had a broken window, it would send a message that no one cared about the building, and that it was okay to break more windows. This mentality would then spread to the next building, and the next until the entire neighbourhood was damaged. In other words, the theory suggested, crime is contagious and little things like this send a signal to people that it is okay to repeat that behaviour..”
I like this research in the context of safety. One of the most common complaints I hear from employees is the inconsistent message: “.they tell us that safety is important but when we tell them about things that need to be fixed, they don’t seem to care; so why should we care about it..”
Linking this back to the broken windows – if the leadership don’t care about making a safe place to work by fixing things that need to be fixed, what message does this send to the workforce that they should care? Just like crime is contagious; so is a positive (or negative) safety culture.
Finally, the individual behaviours piece: it occurred to me the other day (as I was speeding somewhat down the highway) that individuals perform a calculation in their head: what is the risk of this activity vs the probability of something bad actually happening vs the consequence if it did happen.
Just relying on telling employees about the consequence that will happen isn’t enough – human behaviour tells us we can rationalise that with “it will never happen to me.”
What do you think? Would either of these have a bearing on safety in your workplace?
Thanks to noel-arnold.com.au for the image above.
