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E55: Butt-covering paperwork & false safety · Safe As Podcast

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  What if the forms and systems believed by managers to keep
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  workers safe are actually a cynical bud covering exercise
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  that puts people at greater risk?
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  Today's paper exposes how vital safety rituals become
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  meaningless bureaucracy. Hey everyone, I'm Ben Hutchinson
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  and this is Safe as a podcast dedicated to the thrifty
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  analysis of safety, risk and performance research.
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  Visit safetyinsights.org for more research.
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  Today's study is from Boris 2009, titled Exploring Risk
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  Awareness as a Cultural Approach to safety, exposing the gap
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  between workers imagined and work is actually performed in
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  Safety Science Monitor. It's a pretty well known and
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  cited paper by Ethnographic Methodology explore the impact
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  of a risk awareness programme on workers awareness of risks at 2
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  sites within a large contract maintenance organisation in
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  Australia very quickly. The risk awareness programme has
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  two components, a pocket card used by workers before
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  commencing work to get them to stop and think about risks, and
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  a formal process requiring workers to complete a form that
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  apparently demonstrates that they have assessed risk before
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  starting work. Because this was via an
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  ethnographic method, I can really only scratch the surface
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  of the findings. First, some definitions.
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  I'll be referring to this idea of work is imagined and work is
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  done. Without going into too much
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  details, work is imagined very broadly is sort of the idolised
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  picture of how the work should be done or how the process
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  should be completed. It's how the system documents
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  the process, how it's prescribed, how managers think
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  the work is done. So it often includes formal
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  procedures and policies and standards or even mental models,
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  again particularly by managers or designers or people upstream,
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  or even workers themselves about the idolised workflow of the
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  task. In contrast, work as done refers
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  to how the work is actually performed in the real world,
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  accounting for dynamic, complex and often unpredictable nature
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  of daily operations. It includes the adaptations and
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  workarounds and improvisations and all that other sort of jazz
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  every day. It's the messy adaptive reality
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  of work. Now I'm not going to go into it
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  here, but other people like Stephen Shark have expanded
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  these concepts into like work is prescribed.
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  And so there's there's more nuance to it, but we're just
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  going to stick with the more simplified work as imagined work
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  is done. So what did they find?
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  First, it's highlighted that workers didn't value the risk
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  awareness programme, instead viewing the paperwork as a means
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  for managers to protect themselves from any threat of
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  prosecution. Or, as said by one worker, it's
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  all butt covering at the end of the day.
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  For workers, completing the paperwork became a ritual that
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  served to appease the organisational rhetoric about
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  safety, but had minimal influence upon their awareness
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  of risk and their risk control practises.
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  In contrast, managers focused on collecting the paperwork from
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  the programme, which gave them a sense of security that workers
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  were working safely. An implication of this risk
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  awareness programme and how people conceptualise safety is
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  the illusion of safety for workers Rooster expertly
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  navigated by their own common sense.
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  However, as was highlighted in this study, there were instances
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  where workers own perceptions of hazards were inconsistent or
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  lacking, leading them to overvalue their own risk
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  perception and missing sources of harm.
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  That illusion of safety. Indeed, this type of sense
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  making might be highly context specific to an individual's own
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  prior experience in training, thus lulling them into a false
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  sense of safety. Likewise, managers had their own
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  version of the illusion of safety where they place too much
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  value on completed paperwork. For them, the complete paperwork
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  was an indication that hazards were identified and thought
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  about and mitigated. An example highlighted was how 2
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  workers identified hazards that were different to each other
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  that also weren't identified on their risk awareness paperwork
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  earlier that morning. Another example of the illusion
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  of safety within this risk management programme was
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  discussed in the paper. The paper discussed risk
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  awareness against 3 levels of hierarchy, perception,
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  comprehension and projection and in that sense it was found that
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  most workers responses were incomplete across the three
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  levels. It was most incomplete the level
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  of projection which is considering the future
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  implications or meaning of what they have perceived and
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  comprehended. The implication being that
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  workers become fixated on completing the paperwork to
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  please their supervisor or manager, as opposed to actively
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  thinking about and becoming aware of the risks, their actual
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  practises and interactions with those hazards.
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  As the author also notes, simplifying the paperwork to
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  make it easier to complete has resulted in a potentially more
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  mindless tick and flick exercise that may not prompt workers to
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  think about the risks. Also because completing the risk
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  awareness format that the start of the shift has become
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  ritualised at one point in time. This might actually dull the
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  work as awareness of changing circumstances and and the risks
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  and lull them into a false sense of security that because the
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  paperwork has been completed, the job must be safe.
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  Another implication is about the balance of the workers awareness
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  of risks versus the decisions and actions of risk control.
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  For instance, even though workers may be aware of
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  particular risks, the actual practises and the risk controls
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  in the field may differ substantially from the
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  formalised rule that's that difference between workers
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  imagine versus work is done. A number of reasons were given
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  of why this disparity may exist, including some rules being seen
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  as over the top in practical for completing the work or even
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  increasing the risk of failure, or in other cases just too
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  contextually insensitive for them to complete the work and
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  thus rules regularly require their own judgement and common
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  sense to enact. The rules not complete in itself
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  for the workers. They need to apply their own
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  discretion, their own experience and common sense practical
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  knowledge to make the work actually happen safely and
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  efficiently. And as an interjection, I say
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  common sense. But not everybody agrees with
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  this term, instead saying that sense making is personal and
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  what we really mean instead is common knowledge.
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  I agree, but common sense is what was said in the paper, so
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  for convenience I'm sticking with that.
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  The illusion of safety is therefore aggravated further
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  because managers aren't aware of the gap between the formalised
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  rules and systems and the actual risk control practises in the
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  field, nor aware that the use of formalised systems which give
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  them confidence are inconsistent with the workers basic
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  underlying assumptions that safety for them is common sense.
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  These findings highlight a clear gap between work as managers
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  imagined it happen versus work as it actually is performed by
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  workers in the field every day. So what can we make of the
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  findings? Helpfully, the author spends
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  some time discussing the implications.
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  One is that because workers perceptions of risk control
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  differ from managers, there may be substantial sets of
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  collective practises across the organisation which differ from
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  the expected or formalised expectations.
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  That is, the work is done may regularly be different to
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  workers. Imagine that substantially
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  different. I mean, that in itself isn't a
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  huge bonding. We know that from a lot of other
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  research. Therefore, leaders need to be
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  more invested in learning about what those collective practises
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  and the assumptions are, and the assumptions that underline the
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  practises and why they have that meaning to the communities of
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  workers. They understand that and they're
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  in a better place to try and influence sustained and
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  effective change. Therefore, leaders practises
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  should be more focused on eliciting a shared understanding
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  of how workers go about dealing with risk on the job rather than
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  these compliance with paperwork, activities and rituals.
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  And this can be accomplished in part by a better understanding
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  of work is done, being invested in learning about work, and
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  improving daily work. That's it on Safe.
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  As I'm Ben Hutchinson, please help share, rate and review and
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  checkoutsafetyinsights.org for more research.
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  Finally, feel free to support Safe As by shouting a coffee
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  link in the show notes.