Latest / Safe As Podcast / Ep 8: The harm in zero harm

Transcript

Ep 8: The harm in zero harm · Safe As Podcast

• 0:07
  For decades, the mantra of 0 harm has echoed through our
• 0:10
  industries. For some, it's the ultimate
• 0:13
  goal, the only acceptable goal. A clear beacon for safety,
• 0:17
  apparently. But what if the very philosophy
• 0:20
  intended to protect workers was actually linked to more serious
• 0:24
  accidents and even fatalities? This week, we're diving into a
• 0:29
  controversial yet debated paper which questions whether pursuing
• 0:33
  0 might create a dangerous paradox, inadvertently
• 0:36
  increasing the very risks it aims to counter.
• 0:40
  Good day, everyone. I'm Ben Hutchinson, This is Safe
• 0:42
  as a podcast dedicated to the thrifty analysis of safety, risk
• 0:47
  and performance research. Visit safetyinsights.org for
• 0:50
  more research. So this well known and debated
• 0:54
  paper explored the links between major and fatal accidents in
• 0:58
  companies that have and haven't adopted A0 harm philosophy.
• 1:02
  It's from SHAREit and Dainty 2017, published in Policy and
• 1:07
  Practise in Health and Safety. So what were the methods?
• 1:11
  They collected fatal and major accident data from the UK HSC
• 1:15
  under a Freedom of Information request over the periods of 2011
• 1:19
  two, 1012 and 2014 two 1015. This data was then correlated to
• 1:25
  the top 20 construction contractors in the UK based on
• 1:28
  turnover. Essentially, they looked online
• 1:31
  at the company's web pages, find out which ones had openly
• 1:35
  adopted 0 harm philosophies 9 had an explicit 0 policy in
• 1:40
  place. Six companies operated a safety
• 1:42
  programme referencing 0, while the other three included clear
• 1:46
  statements around 0 providing background.
• 1:50
  The authors argue in their paper zero has become the biggest
• 1:54
  number in safety despite the prevalence of 0 in industry.
• 1:58
  The lack of an evidence based evaluation of 0 is really rather
• 2:01
  surprising. 0's been mobilised in many ways. 0 Harm beyond
• 2:06
  zero, Vision Zero and more. Some position as a visionary
• 2:10
  journey, adopted as a principle for organisational management
• 2:14
  and leadership rather than a specific goal.
• 2:17
  For others, 0 is a specific target with 0 injuries and
• 2:21
  fatalities is the only acceptable value or goal.
• 2:24
  Some research found 0 programmes often positioned as a tangible
• 2:27
  goal, something which can be counted and measured through a
• 2:31
  plethora of targets. However, in one study, this
• 2:35
  utopia was challenged and even derided by the construction
• 2:38
  workers themselves, for whom the lived realities their working
• 2:42
  lives told them that zero is and is likely to remain a utopian
• 2:46
  fantasy totally incompatible with the current challenges of
• 2:50
  production that they face every day.
• 2:52
  Also, as argued in this paper, critics believe zero may stymie
• 2:57
  open dialogue and learning in organisations.
• 3:00
  Proponents argue that many construction organisations have
• 3:02
  zeros wrong, they're not doing it right and focus on the
• 3:06
  numbers instead of the vision to inspire real change and
• 3:09
  innovation in practise. Others have argued that zero in
• 3:13
  any form can act as a distraction because of its
• 3:16
  allure of measurement. Thus 0, in their view, creates a
• 3:21
  misdirection in efforts to cease all harm rather than the harm
• 3:24
  that really matters, and stifling both learning and
• 3:27
  reporting in an industry which already struggles to report its
• 3:31
  accidents and incidents in an honest and timely fashion.
• 3:35
  So with that background out of the way, what did this study
• 3:37
  find? Well, overall this data set
• 3:41
  suggests that working on a project subject to A0 safety
• 3:44
  policy or a programme actually appears to slightly increase the
• 3:49
  likelihood of having a serious life changing accident or
• 3:51
  fatality, what they called a zero paradox.
• 3:55
  But importantly, the authors were careful to highlight both
• 3:59
  the limitations of the study data and that they make no
• 4:02
  claims about causality. For instance, we know of the
• 4:06
  statistical issues of incident data validity and also the
• 4:09
  possibility of other explanations, like perhaps
• 4:12
  companies that operate in more hazardous industries might be
• 4:15
  more likely to adopt 0 as a response.
• 4:18
  I'll cover more of the limitations and caveats later,
• 4:21
  so let's jump into some of the specifics.
• 4:24
  They found 4 fatal accidents occurred in zero companies.
• 4:28
  No fatal accidents occurred in non zero companies.
• 4:31
  The 214 major failures in companies with 0 and there was
• 4:36
  135 major injuries in companies without zero safety approach.
• 4:41
  When correlated to the volume of work, there were seven major or
• 4:45
  specified accidents per million turnover for those with zero and
• 4:50
  six accidents per billion turnover for those without 0.
• 4:54
  So taken together, the authors argue that a zero paradox could
• 4:57
  be in play where you are marginally more likely to be
• 5:00
  involved in a major accident while working on a 0 project
• 5:04
  compared to a non 0. Or, as they aptly state, being
• 5:07
  involved in a 0 affiliated UK construction project could,
• 5:11
  according to paper, actually mean a greater risk of injury or
• 5:14
  death. In practise, again, there's such
• 5:17
  a small difference between the adopters and non adopters it's
• 5:20
  difficult to know whether this is actually a real statistical
• 5:22
  effect. In any case, they further argue
• 5:26
  that based on this data, at least 0 approaches would seem to
• 5:30
  struggle to be labelled a success, with more accidents
• 5:33
  rather than fewer under A0 safety banner, or at least no
• 5:37
  real determinable difference. The zero possibly hasn't made
• 5:41
  positive or negative contributions to practise, or
• 5:44
  perhaps even a negative impact suggests that the rhetoric of 0
• 5:48
  is masking the reality of construction site safety
• 5:51
  programmes which are neither innovating nor developing in
• 5:54
  their thinking or practise. Beyond the application of this
• 5:57
  new branding, the author suggests that perhaps the UK
• 6:02
  construction industry simply isn't mature enough for 0 as a
• 6:05
  target or vision. However, considering the
• 6:09
  findings of this study, it's possible that the DIS benefits
• 6:12
  outweigh the benefits and again, perhaps 0 is causing more harm
• 6:17
  than is able to prevent. This data suggests, even with
• 6:22
  its limitations, that there is at least the potential for an
• 6:25
  increase in accidents following the introduction of 0.
• 6:28
  Safety on site. Further, there's no guarantee
• 6:31
  that the implementation of 0 safety can ensure continued or
• 6:35
  even any reduction in accident rates overall and indeed seems
• 6:39
  to have a limited impact in terms of catalysing any
• 6:42
  significant step changes in improvement in safety
• 6:45
  performance. So what were the limitations?
• 6:48
  Well, we've already covered some critical limitations expanding
• 6:52
  here. There's just four years of data
• 6:55
  and we're dealing with incidents.
• 6:57
  Incidents are really problematic.
• 7:00
  So Helliwell's data previously suggested that incidents are
• 7:03
  highly readily distributed. It's really difficult to find
• 7:07
  correlations with that gigantic data sets.
• 7:10
  We also don't know how comparable each organisation is,
• 7:12
  so whether we really can cleanly compare like for like apples for
• 7:17
  apples. So what do we make of the
• 7:19
  findings? So cards on the table.
• 7:22
  I am not a supporter of 0 harm approaches, but I think sensibly
• 7:29
  it's a single study. We shouldn't make too much, but
• 7:32
  nevertheless it does help shift the burden of evidence.
• 7:36
  We actually don't have much evidence for or against on the
• 7:39
  effects of 0 harm approaches in safety.
• 7:42
  More importantly, I think arguments for or against 0 harm
• 7:46
  approaches probably make too much of these arguments.
• 7:49
  What I mean is, assuming that 0 harm approaches will somehow
• 7:53
  statistically significantly impact performance, good or bad,
• 7:57
  is probably optimistic at best. In any case, I concur with Drew,
• 8:02
  Ray and Dave Proven on the Safety of Work podcast.
• 8:05
  If you don't already have a 0 harm approach, adopting it may
• 8:09
  not meet your needs. If you already have one, then
• 8:13
  reconsider the targets, the expectations and the messaging
• 8:16
  just to ensure that it is meeting your needs.
• 8:19
  Is 0 an illusion in your organisation Because people are
• 8:23
  afraid of reporting in fear of disrupting the statistics or
• 8:27
  hopes of a pizza party? That's it on Safe as I'm Ben
• 8:32
  Hutchinson, please help share, rate and review and
• 8:36
  checkoutsafetyinsights.org for more research.
• 8:39
  Finally, feel free to support Safe As by shouting a coffee
• 8:44
  link in the show notes.