Can people be responsible for their own safety? Part 1

 

All injuries involve a hazard and a person. Most of our effort at work to reduce injuries has been on managing the hazard. We do this by having a safety management system in place and using the hierarchy of controls. Part 1 will categorise human error into four critical errors and four human states.

But what can we do to influence people’s behaviour that can put them at risk and deal with the other side of the safety coin?
There are essentially three approaches:

• A colleague tries to influence a person’s ‘at-risk’ behaviour - this is usually in the form of a peer-to-peer observation program;
• A supervisor and/or manager tries to influence a person’s at-risk behaviour - usually in the form of a safety leadership program, which is extended to everyone so they can become ‘safety leaders’; and
• Human error prevention, a new approach which gives the person tools to influence their own at-risk behaviour.

This article will focus on this third approach, which helps people prevent making mistakes commonly known as ‘human error’.

Human error

There are two types of at-risk behaviour:

• Things people do deliberately (consciously); and
• Things people do unintentionally or habitually (subconsciously).

Deliberate at-risk behaviour includes procedure, rule and PPE violations. It’s when people know they’re taking a risk and they’re willing to roll the dice. Peer-to-peer observation programs and safety leadership are very effective at dealing with this kind of deliberate at-risk behaviour. By providing feedback or letting people know how important safety is to the organisation, themselves and their family, they can be influenced to stop the at-risk behaviour. They can do this because they consciously chose to take the risk in the first place.

Unintentional or habitual at-risk behaviour is not consciously chosen. It’s when people go into ‘auto-pilot’ mode and they’re not fully aware of what they’re doing or what is going on around them. Most of the time there are no hazards or the hazards do not make contact with them, so nothing happens. But they do increase the risk of injuring themselves without meaning to.

Consider when others speak or text on a mobile phone while driving. Have you ever noticed the types of mistakes they make? They swerve into traffic lanes; they don’t indicate when changing lanes or turning; and they don’t keep to the speed limit. If you had the chance to speak to them, they would tell you they didn’t mean to do it and they will "be more careful" or "pay more attention" in the future.

This is just one example of at-risk behaviour that is unintentional or habitual. Recent studies have shown that habits direct more than 95% of our behaviour. One paper at a recent safety conference quoted that habits dictate 99.7% of our day-to-day activities. But because the behaviours associated with our habits are not ‘conscious’, we cannot ‘decide them away’. We need something else to address this type of ‘at-risk’ behaviour.

Research on this issue has revealed four critical errors people make unintentionally and the four states they are in when they make those errors. For example, 20,000 people were asked what unintentional mistakes they made. The top four responses, referred to as ‘critical errors’, were:

• Eyes not on task;
• Mind not on task;
• Being in, or moving into, the line of fire; and
• Loss of balance, traction or grip.

When the same people were asked about the circumstances under which those critical errors were made, the top four responses, referred to as ‘states’, were:

• Rushing;
• Fatigue;
• Frustration; and
• Complacency.

People reported they were more likely to make critical errors when they were in one or more of the four states.

 

Part 2 will consider how to make safe behaviour a habit for workers.

 

By Cristian Sylvestre, a Director of SafeTrain, an OHSE consultancy specialising in human error prevention; a human error prevention specialist and Vice President of the NSW Division of the Safety Institute of Australia.