The Safety of Work

We will discuss how other safety science researchers have designed theories that use Rasmussen’s concepts, the major takeaways from Rasmussen’s article, and how safety professionals can use these theories to analyze and improve systems in their own organizations today.   Discussion Points: Rasmussen’s history of influence, and the parallels to (Paul) Erdős numbers in research paper publishing How...

Find out our thoughts on this paper and our key takeaways for the ever-changing world of workplace safety.    Topics: Introduction to the paper & the Author “Adding more rules is not going to make your system safer.” The principles of safety in the paper Types of safety systems as broken down by the paper Problems in these “Ultrasafe systems” The Summary of developments of human error The psycholo...

This paper by Daniel Katz was published in 1964 and, scarily still has some very relevant takeaways for today’s safety procedures  in organisations. We delve into this research and discover the ideas that Katz initiated all those years ago. The problem is that an organization cannot promote one of these concepts without negatively affecting the other. So how are organizations meant to manage this?...

This paper reveals some really interesting findings and it would be valuable for companies to take notice and possibly change the way they implement incident report recoMmendations.    Topics: Introduction to the paper The general process of an investigation The Hypothesis  The differences between the reports and their language The results of the three reports Differences in the recommendations on...

It's Modelling the Micro-Foundations of the Audit Society: Organizations and the Logic of the Audit Trail by Michael Power. This paper gets us thinking about why organizations do audits in the first place seeing as it has been proven to often decrease the efficiency of the actual process being audited. We discuss the negatives as well as the positives of audits - which both help explain why audits...

The specific paper found some interesting results from these simulated situations - including that it was found that the debriefing, post-simulation, had a large impact on the amount of learning the participants felt they made. The doctors chat about whether the research was done properly and whether the findings could have been tested against alternative scenarios to better prove the theorized re...

The paper we reference today is our own research paper published in 2018 named; Safety clutter: the accumulation and persistence of ‘safety’ work that does not contribute to operational safety. So we have done ample research when it comes to this particular topic and we’re excited to share this knowledge with you. Hopefully you will take away from this episode a better understanding of where to st...

While there may be many reasons for this - this particular research paper looks at how younger workers are inducted into the workplace and how they learn about the safety practices and requirements that are expected. The findings are pretty fascinating - especially for people responsible for hiring new employees.   Topics Introduction to the research paper Types of questions researchers asked rese...

The reason we are talking about this today, is because this tactic is often used in workplace safety videos and we ask whether or not it works for everyone, how well it works for workplace safety and whether its even ethical in the first place, regardless of its efficacy.    Topics: Deciding to discuss shock tactics/threat appeals in the podcast Do they have a place in organization safety manageme...

The findings of this research point to the importance of staff buy-in and a team-driven approach to safety.   Topics: Introduction to research paper Seven features of safety in maternity units The premise of the study Understanding the process behind data collection for this study The Finding of the paper Six Features/themes of patient safety Rules & procedures vs social control mechanisms Patient...

Greg makes it very clear how important it is to avoid oversimplifying the term “due diligence”. He shares how this mistake has, unfortunately, led to safety officers and businesses being held liable for incidents at their premises. Today’s conversation with Greg was incredibly insightful to me and he clarified all his examples with real-life examples.   Topics: Introduction to Greg Smith Paper Saf...

Together, Jop and I discuss a topic on which Drew and I previously touched: We revisit how stop-work decisions are made and why this is such an interesting topic of research.   Topics: Jop’s research methods. How to interpret and explain procedures. Why rules don’t always lead to a work stoppage. Why stop-work happens. The perception vs. reality of stop-work. Myths and expectations of safety cultu...

This topic interested us mainly because of a paper we encountered. It’s a very new peer-reviewed study that has only just been published online. We will use that paper as the framing device for our conversation. Join us for this interesting and exciting conversation about the capacity index.   Topics: The belief in required metrics. Low injury rates and what they actually mean. The regulator parad...

As our workplaces become more automated, it becomes the task of human workers to monitor the automated actions. At times, this may require a physical response or action on behalf of the human worker. So, while the physical load of workers has been lessened, their mental and emotional load has increased. Tune in to hear us define pointing and calling and the ensuing discussion about its efficacy wi...

We came across this topic, because of a conversation happening on LinkedIn. Thus, we thought it would be a good idea to dig into this subject and discuss it further. Listen in as we discuss what actually makes humans most visible in unsafe situations and what some studies have concluded.   Topics: Why the results between lab and natural environments vary. How studies determine visibility. Which co...

This topic came directly from our Safety of Work portal, which you can locate on our LinkedIn page. Rhys Thomas was good enough to submit this topic and also provided us with some great resources. Join us as we dive into this topic and decide whether double-check policies help improve safety.   Topics: What double-checking is. The difference between a practice and mandatory policy. Armitage and hi...

So, on today’s episode, we discuss Occupational Health and Safety management and if it can be considered a profession.  We’d love to hear from our international listeners if our findings match their experiences.   Topics: Making generalizations about work across Australia. Collecting and defining OHS knowledge. Three broad criteria for defining a profession. Defining a role and career path. The OH...

Russell is a safety practitioner based in New Zealand. He joins us to tell us about his work and together we wonder if safety and design processes change the design itself.   Topics: Is safety and design effective? Risk shuffling. Russell’s key findings. The hierarchy of controls. The proper use of safety and design. Evaluating design to minimize risk. Practical advice from Russell.   Quotes: “We...

Today, we plan to discuss whether safety cases are headed towards an impending crisis. Join us as we figure out if the work safety community is headed for disaster.   Topics: Shifting the burden of proof. The notion of “anti-safety”. Making the implicit, explicit. Trends of the past. Impediments to research. Variant and process theories. Disrupting beliefs and ideas to create a more favorable outc...

You may find that this conversation makes us look hypocritical, when discussing how to argue. We just want the best outcomes for all discussions regarding safety. Ultimately, this topic came out of some recent intense arguments in the safety field and we wanted to address how to constructively handle disagreements in person and online.   Topics: Finding original sources. Figuring out what the orig...

The final chapters cover such issues as creating functional reporting systems and the pitfalls in creating such systems.   Topics: Creating a solid reporting system. At what point does something become an incident? Voluntary vs. mandatory reporting. When your organization is facing prosecution. How reporting gets stifled. The problem with penalties. Looking after all parties involved in incidents....

In this installment, we cover more chapters from Sidney Dekker’s book about just culture. Last week we covered the core ideas of just culture. This week, we go over retributive and restorative culture and the impetus behind rule-breaking.   Topics: The problem with rewarding good behavior. How a retributive system functions. The standard for risk assessment. How restorative culture functions. Why...

For the next few weeks, we are going to cover ‘just culture’ and focus mainly on Sidney Dekker’s book of the same name. The laws currently on the books encourage businesses to focus on liability instead of actual safety. By focusing on culpability for an accident, this is a way for businesses to get out of compensating the worker for injury. This is just some of what we will discuss today.   Topic...

As risk assessment is such a central topic in the world of safety science, we thought we would dedicate another episode to discussing a facet of this subject. We loop back to risk matrices and determine how to score risks. Join us as we try to determine the subjectivity of risk assessment and the pitfalls of such an endeavor.   Topics: Risk matrices. Why the paper we reference is a trustworthy sou...

It’s difficult to give an introduction to this topic, given that a JSA is such an amorphous topic. Generally speaking, we’re talking about job or task-hazard analysis; the idea behind task-hazard analysis is that you break the task down into steps and figure out what controls are necessary to keep the task safe. Tune in to hear us clarify the idea of and benefits from job safety analysis.   Topics...