The Safety of Work

We use the paper, Articulating the Differences Between Safety and Resilience , in order to frame our chat. Topics: How to navigate competing operational goals. Why there isn’t a lot of great theory about goal conflicts. Exploring how people make decisions. How dealing with risk gives you expertise. Piece-rate contracting strategies. Why simulations can hurt or help. Quotes: “So, you’re constantly...

The paper we use to frame today’s discussion is We Can Stop Work, but Then Nothing Gets Done. Topics: Why do workers not stop when risk is obvious? The purpose of focus groups as a data collection method. The pitfalls of the focus group method. Turning focus groups transcripts into research findings. How supervisors can support workers in making good decisions. Why it’s hard for workers to turn do...

We use the 2019 paper, Safety in Numbers , to frame this week’s discussion. Topics: The amount of exposure increases the amount of risk. Safety in Numbers is a 2019 update to a 2017 paper of the same name. Why you should get down and dirty with the numbers. Be careful about what stats do and don’t tell you. How volume affects risk potential. Rate vs. raw number. How our systems encourage familiari...

In order to guide our discussion, we will use the paper Further Thoughts on the Utilities of Risk Matrices. Topics: The risk matrix was something to use to determine expected values. Today, the risk matrix is a table, not just an equation. Risk matrices can prove helpful in decision making. There are a few types of papers that discuss the efficacy of risk matrices. The Loss of Information idea. Co...

Tune in to hear us discuss the paper Site Managers and Safety Leadership in the Offshore Gas and Oil Industry and its survey’s findings. Topics: Leadership is something everyone agrees is key to workplace safety. The paper we reference is Site Managers and Safety Leadership in the Offshore Gas and Oil Industry. Matching the research question to a survey is quite difficult. This research paper had...

Tune in to hear us talk about how the drive to reduce costs can negatively impact safety. We frame this week’s discussion around the paper, An Industry Structured for Unsafety. Topics: When you submit a low bid for a tender, what does that end up doing to safety? How to work with and understand your contractors. Fixed and direct costs. Marginal cost pricing. The effect of cost-cutting on protectiv...

Tune in to hear us talk about this topic in the context of the paper we chose to reference this week. Topics: Our safety practices are always about reducing uncertainty. The paper we’ve chosen to use for today’s discussion is Promoting Safety by Increasing Uncertainty. The paper uses major accidents to frame its arguments. Differences of opinion is a type of uncertainty. Increasing uncertainty in...

Topics: The relationship between safety and trust is harder to define than one would expect. We use the works of one doctor to help us understand this topic. Trust doesn’t necessarily lead to safer work environments. However, too much distrust can lead to an unhealthy workplace. One of the papers is about how to create trust. Quotes: “...It’s not as simple as ‘trust is a good thing’ and ‘distrust...

Topics: We often talk about how leaders affect safety, but we never think of the team. Using the research paper Improving Safety Culture Through the Health and Safety Organization as a framework for this discussion. Getting a baseline measure before making any changes. What makes a good quantitative experiment. The findings of the research paper and what it tells us. How to be a role model for saf...

Topics: How to figure out which rules will be effective. We use the paper Catching Them at It as a framework for our discussion. Why rules are broken. Who to interview to get to the heart of the matter. Self-efficacy. Balancing the need for compliance with decision-making. How certain rules can be contradictory or problematic. Quotes: “In all safety-critical environments, there are endless possibi...

Tune in to hear us discuss whether behavioral safety interventions are effective and worthwhile. Topics: We purposely picked a broad topic for this episode. Studies on behavioral safety interventions and how they were structured. Only one of the studies was done within a more traditional framework. Why it’s difficult to track safety in the workplace. Getting good evidence by looking more closely a...

Welcome to an introduction to our new podcast, Safety of Work. In this podcast we will discuss how safety works. We aim to provide listeners with examples of safety processes that exist in the real world and how they can use those processes in their own lives. Topics: Safety comes from operational work. How safety works at work. The goal and the means of safety are different. What to expect from e...