Safety Leadership: Think ‘fit’ – not ‘fix’ – when designing work for safety

Editor’s Note: Achieving and sustaining an injury-free workplace demands strong leadership. In this monthly column, experts from global consulting firm DEKRA share their point of view on what leaders need to know to guide their organizations to safety excellence.

When incidents occur, a common reaction is to say the worker didn’t know enough, didn’t have the capabilities or simply didn’t care. Blaming the worker leads to easy fixes, such as retraining or disciplinary action. Although these corrective actions may sometimes be necessary, most incidents involve good, knowledgeable, capable workers. Therefore, “fixing” the person isn’t an acceptable solution.

Why? Because we’re all similarly wired, and that sets us up to be imperfect and make errors.

Instead of trying to fix people, organizations must change how they design work to fit people. Tailoring the work environment requires understanding how the brain works and how visualization affects decision-making.

How our brain operates

The cerebrum – the “slow brain” – consciously processes information. It analyzes, solves problems and makes decisions.

The paleomammalian cortex – the “fast brain” – also processes information, but at greater speed and using less energy. It moves us into action based on reaction and habit without consciously thinking through the situation. Fast-brain functioning is most common during repetitive tasks and among experienced workers who fall into the trap of always doing tasks the same way.

When it comes to most activities in which safety is paramount, ideally, we want slow-brain functioning, which is more analytical and gives us time to make safe decisions.

Prime slow-brain functioning

The slow brain isn’t a light switch that people choose to turn off and on. The brain finds opportune moments to conserve energy and uses the fast brain during tasks that have been done before. Work activities must be designed with this in mind. They need to prime people to consciously think through activities that, while quite similar, are often different in complex, dynamic work environments.

Tips to prime slow-brain use:

• Create engagement in pre-work activities, such as pre-job safety briefs. Dig deeper using follow-up questions that promote specific responses:
  • What’s different this time doing a familiar job?
  • What could go wrong?
  • How will the team prevent potential events?
• Transform worksite engagements by focusing on brain-centered hazards and asking workers how they’re controlling specific exposures.
• Plan high-risk job tasks for higher-energy times of day.
• Create standard operating procedures and risk assessments that identify brain-centered hazards.

Enhance visual recognition

Workers are also wired in a way that misses information key to completing a job accurately and safely. Quite often, we simply see what we expect to see. This is known as expectation bias. Visual recognition is paramount to reducing exposures. Many undesired safety events have occurred because of poor visual recognition of exposures. A general scan often isn’t enough.

Tips to enhance visual recognition:

• Implement a strategy that looks broadly to identify hard-to-see exposures.
• Use brain-aligned checklists for critical exposures that could result in serious injuries and fatalities.
• Design work-related activities that include a conversation on what’s changed or is different.
• Establish specific pause points to reassess the worksite for changes that could create exposures.

Given the dynamic nature of work environments, priming slow-brain functioning and developing a more strategic approach to the visual recognition of exposures are paramount to increasing safety. And because no one control is perfect, implementing multiple layers is essential.