Latest / Safe As Podcast / Ep 25: Do workers in high-risk industries use and value procedures?

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Ep 25: Do workers in high-risk industries use and value procedures? · Safe As Podcast

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  If your safety procedures feel less like an aid to help
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  navigate safe and reliable performance and more like a
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  document to protect the company from lawsuits, you're not alone.
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  Today, we're uncovering the painful realisation of how a
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  compliance culture can erode trust, disengage workers and
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  leave you dangerously exposed when things go wrong.
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  Good day everyone. I'm Ben Hutchinson and This is
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  Safe as a podcast dedicated to the thrifty analysis of safety,
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  risk and performance research. Visit safetyinsights.org for
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  more research. Today's study is from Perez ET
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  al 2020 titled Worker Centred Investigation of Issues with
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  Procedural Systems. Findings from interviews with a
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  representative sample of workers in high risk process industries
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  published in Journal of Loss Prevention in the Process
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  Industries. This is one of several studies
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  from this group of authors. I'll cover another one of their
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  papers shortly. This study explored the thoughts
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  and perceptions of workers concerning procedure use and the
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  purpose of procedures. 20 workers from the process
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  industries, including refining, chemical plants and more were
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  included. So what did they find?
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  Well, for changing procedures, most workers indicated going to
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  their supervisor to start the change process.
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  However, some workers had a really negative view about the
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  change process, citing procedure change starting but never been
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  completed, or it just takes too long, or workers not finding the
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  process necessary for themselves or others, or the firm culture
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  not approving of the process change itself.
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  Some evidence suggested that a procedure change could vary
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  between weeks to six months, and significant lapses really could
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  affect workers propensity to even use the procedures.
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  Or if it took too long, then have them believe that their
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  input isn't even valued. The authors cite a study
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  suggesting that workers perceived procedure quality was
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  predictive of whether they used the procedure or not.
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  So for their perceptions on the utility of procedures, some
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  workers indicated that using the procedure was about helping to
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  mitigate potential liability issues.
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  That is, they see it more as a exercise by the organisation to
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  cover their backs. Or the workers use it purely to
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  cover their own backs from blame from the organisation.
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  They didn't really see it as something that helped them do
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  their work. The authors also argue that if
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  workers are expected to blindly follow procedures, then they are
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  less likely to be critically thinking where it may be
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  dangerous or inefficient to form the task as per the procedure,
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  which has been called malicious compliance.
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  It's noted that when procedural systems are designed for blind
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  compliance and workers have this attitude towards them, it
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  indicates that the workers experience of procedures as a
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  tool for management as opposed to a tool to support their
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  performance and safety. This is actually supported by
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  other research too. Again, on procedure use, over
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  half of the workers indicated that they depart from the
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  procedures by either not following the steps exactly or
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  by not even using the procedure at all.
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  Other research has shown even up to 90% of people won't follow
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  procedures routinely. Now these procedural departures
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  were usually due to equipment malfunction or contextual
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  changes in the tasks. Like from one worker's
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  perspective in this study, they said, I mean, you don't deviate
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  to the point where it's dangerous.
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  You just kind of, you operate, you know, you're an operator,
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  you operate the equipment. For the reasons why, well,
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  reducing time was a major factor of course, and this was
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  regularly reported to be linked with pressure from immediate
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  supervisors. Other frequently reported
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  reasons included worker experience and when a task if
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  physically impossible to complete due to equipment
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  malfunction, then procedural departures are often seen as the
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  only practical action to take. The work has to get done and to
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  get work done they have to depart from the procedure.
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  Some workers indicated that their organisation had processes
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  for requesting a emergency procedural deviation and they
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  would actually use it down to time.
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  So rule departure in this study was really similar with other
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  research where workers depart from procedures that are seen to
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  be inaccurate or outdated or contain unnecessary information.
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  Rule use also decreased over time for some workers due to
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  familiarity with the task. Indeed, for some workers they
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  had a real attitude of disinterest or even professional
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  pride guide their perception of procedures.
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  For example, if the task was seen to be mundane or they were
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  too experienced, then they were less likely to use a procedure.
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  So, quoting the paper, this may suggest that experienced workers
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  may develop procedures that are perceived as more efficient or
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  adequate experientially. That is, the workers find
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  smarter, more efficient, better ways of doing the work so they
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  follow their own internal processes.
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  Now a trade off here may be replacing knowledge in the world
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  with knowledge in the head, and this trade off might increase
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  the chance of forgetting key steps for safety critical work.
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  But that door also swings the other ways that sometimes we're
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  trying to capture procedures, things that really can't be
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  captured, very implicit knowledge that experience
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  operators have. Now the findings indicate that
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  the management and implementation of procedures is
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  quite a complex issue, and it becomes even more difficult in
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  larger companies. And implementing an effective
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  procedural system requires more than the content of procedures
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  and it requires more than procedural training because our
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  existing approaches might really fail to address critical
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  elements like pressure from supervisors and management
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  attitudes that the procedures are more a protection from
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  liability, long turn around times for advising procedures, a
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  lack of real functional utility for people that might be time
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  consuming, challenging to translate a whole bunch of
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  factors. So what the authors say is that
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  procedures and training and a lot of the common procedural
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  elements that we use are necessary but not sufficient for
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  an effective procedural system. Therefore, understanding
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  behaviours pertaining to procedure requires A holistic
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  understanding of all the sort of links between the procedural
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  systems and their implementation and the safety climate and all
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  these other things within the organisation, very
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  sociotechnical reasons. Finally, the authors argue that
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  even if a company could produce, you know, practically perfect
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  procedures and train workers to them, if the overarching
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  business prioritises production, that is production pressures,
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  then workers will likely always be put in a position where they
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  are asked to violate procedures to save time and increase
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  productivity. So what can we make of the
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  findings? Well, there's a few things that
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  come out of these types of studies and I'll cover, as I
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  said, maybe one or two more of their studies in the future.
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  But perhaps we should see procedural systems as a tool for
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  workers and they really need to help create safe and reliable
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  work. And they're not used as a big
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  stick to hit them with. They're not used for
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  retrospective accountability and blame.
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  We need to have established methods for quickly getting
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  approval for needed exceptions to procedures, you know, if the
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  equipment has changed and the procedure is no longer
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  appropriate or permanent to work systems.
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  We need to have an effective and efficient system of continuous
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  quality cheques of the content and format and we really need to
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  ensure that it it represents reality, the actual work that
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  people do. It needs to be a tool, a
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  resource for action. We need to confirm that
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  procedures are easy for workers to use and tasks are as easy as
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  possible to reform. So make it as easy as possible
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  to do the right thing and more difficult to do the wrong thing.
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  And that really is a factor of design and human factors.
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  We should leverage empirical guidance regarding how procedure
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  documents should be designed. There actually is a lot of
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  information out there on how to draught up a really more
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  efficient, effective procedure and require that most and
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  certainly the critical procedures be physically
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  validated before they are deployed and tested in the field
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  in micro experiments. Ensure that they actually
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  deliver the things that we expect them to deliver.