Illusionary Safety: Are you just playing a role?

A theatrical production only works as entertainment to the extent of the audience’s willingness to suspend its skepticism, ignore reality and buy into the illusion.   Despite the drama and theatrics sometimes present, the workplace is not a stage and buying in to illusionary safety can be harmful or even deadly. 

“I never believed it would happen to me.”  Claim managers, medical professionals, and paramedics hear this repeatedly; many of us will even admit privately to saying the same thing. Most workers know the hazards present in their workplace but many underestimates their own risk and over-estimate their immunity from harm.  This dissonance between objective risk and individual perception of personal risk is often resolved in favour of adopting a sense of invincibility, the idea that some imaginary third wall protects the individual from even apparent risks in the work underway around them.  Many have been injured or died by accepting the illusion of safety over the reality of risk. 

Workplace injuries shatter the illusion of safety.  In workplaces where a life-altering injury occurs, co-workers often report an increase in the belief that “it can happen to me”; immediately following a workplace fatality or serious injury, everyone in the workplace is more alert to the potential of harm.  Workers and supervisors are alive to the reality of risk and believe in that reality.  This heightened vigilance, however, often fades with time.  New personnel, changed work procedures and the passage of time reset the stage, allowing workplace participants to slip back into the illusory mindset.  Objective observation of active violations of safe work procedures, for example, might be called out in the months following a serious event but selectively or even willingly overlooked as time passes.

Costumes and stagecraft distract from reality and contribute to the illusion in motion pictures and theatrical productions.  Context matters; uniforms and safety gear in a workplace are there to support safety not an illusion.  There is nothing inherently safe or protective about a strip of reflective cloth, but safety vests are more than costuming.  They are part of a system of safety, controlling hazards and minimizing risks.

Personal protective equipment (PPE)and other safety gear are not props.  Wearing safety goggles on your head and hearing protection around your neck are actions more akin to theatrical costuming than workplace health and safety.  A roofer wearing a fall arrest harness but failing to attach it or a deli worker wearing latex gloves but texting between serving customers— are examples of acting, not safety.  A caregiver gliding hands under cool water with little or no cleanser is acting—telling a story through actions that mimic reality but do nothing to ameliorate risk.  If you skip the hand washing and PPE when no one is around, you are deluding yourself and may still be putting others at risk. 

The first rule of improv is to say “yes ; work is not improvisational theatre.  If you don’t know how to do a task, lack training on equipment, or are unsure about risks, you have a right and responsibility to say “no.”  If you don’t have the right tool or lack the appropriate PPE, don’t improvise; every improvisation introduces new and potentially unanticipated risks.  The health and safety of yourself or others may be compromised by improvising.  A handkerchief is not a substitute for a respirator.

Safe work procedures may seem like a script or stage instructions but they are more than that.  They are specifically designed to control hazards, not entertain or engage audiences.  It is not enough to put on a safety “act”; there is a real difference between acting and being safe on the job.   That’s even true when acting is the job.  After all, actors and stunt artists are workers, too. Theatrical effects may create the illusion of danger and mayhem but are achieved by strict adherence to safety; engineering controls, safe working procedures and even choreography are essential to safety in modern stagecraft.

Safety is not stage magic:  an illusion with the appearance of truth (apologies to Tennessee Williams).  If you buy into illusionary safety, you are choosing to ignore the inherent risk reality of your workplace.  Putting on a safety act and reciting platitudes about safety hide the hard reality of hazards in the pleasant guise of illusionary safety. 

Engaging in illusionary safety is not just deluding yourself; it forces co-workers and other persons in the workplace into supporting roles or an unwitting audience in your production. Work is not performance art or street acting.  The safety of others depends on you.  Illusionary safety puts others at risk.

Don’t just “play the part” of a safety professional. Be one.  

Is a “safety culture” assessment right for your organization?

Safety culture is a popular term in occupational health and safety articles.  There is no one universally accepted definition but the US OSHA describes Safety cultures this way:

Safety cultures consist of shared beliefs, practices, and attitudes that exist at an establishment.  Culture is the atmosphere created by those beliefs, attitudes, etc., which shape our behavior.  An organizations safety culture is the result of a number of factors such as:§  Management and employee norms, assumptions and beliefs;
§  Management and employee attitudes;
§  Values, myths, stories;
§  Policies and procedures;
§  Supervisor priorities, responsibilities and accountability;
§  Production and bottom line pressures vs. quality issues;
§  Actions or lack of action to correct unsafe behaviors;
§  Employee training and motivation; and
§  Employee involvement or "buy-in”

Safety culture is often summarized as “The way we do things around here”.  

However you define it, a safety culture can only exist in a social context, in a community of individuals (specifically employees and management) organized around a work objective.  Safety culture in any particular organization at any given time is dependent on that context.  If the context is relatively stable then the safety culture is likely stable over time (absent interventions or events that disrupt the status quo).  

Building a strong safety culture can make workplaces safer by extinguishing behaviours that put workers at risk, increasing adherence to safe work procedures, eliminating hazards, etc. 

An “assessment” is an examination process by means of a structured (formalized) instrument such as a survey or audit (including interviews).  An assessment has a result or conclusion often expressed as a score against specific areas examined.  The formalized nature of an assessment instrument ensures the components or criteria are applied consistently.  Effective assessments measure what they purport to examine in an objective way; they are highly replicable and consistent (regardless of who administers and scores the assessment) and comparable (over time and between similar populations). 

With or without a formal safety culture assessment, your organization has a safety culture.  You likely have a good idea what your organizational safety culture is.  The question is simply this:  Is a formal safety culture or safety climate (a closely related concept) assessment useful to your organization?  The answer is not always an automatic “yes”.

It is currently fashionable to promote safety culture or climate through various assessments.  The WorkSafe New Zealand “Safety Culture Snapshot  Survey” and the Nordic Occupational Safety Climate Questionnaire (NOSACQ)  are two such examples.  At the end of the assessment, management and employees have a measure of the organizational safety culture at the point the assessment took place.  Each assessment is very specific to a particular time, organizational structure, and labour force composition.  This specificity, often to a single work location and work group at a point in time, is both an advantage and limitation of formal safety culture assessments. 

If you have a stable work organization doing similar work with a relatively constant workforce and management team in a medium to large enterprise, then the assessment may be valid and useful as a baseline and to measure improvements over time.   If your organization is smaller, has a labour force that is subject to frequent changes (layoffs, temporary hires, turnovers, changing work teams, etc.) a safety culture assessment will still get a measure of the safety culture at a point in time but the validity of comparisons over time may be difficult to prove and its utility as an instrument for improvement less valuable than more targeted or direct alternative initiatives at improving workplace safety.   

An organization that decides to undergo a safety culture assessment does so for a reason.  Sometimes that reason is sincerely based on a genuine interest in improvement of workplace safety.  If an organization already has a pretty good idea about the state of its safety culture, the formal assessment can be an expensive and time-consuming effort to tell you what you already know.  If an organization is very unsure of its safety culture, then an assessment can play an important role in identifying opportunities for improvement and defining a baseline for future measurement. 

Unfortunately, many organizations engage in safety culture assessments for political reasons or to meet some external pressure or particular criterion in a certification process.  Some see a safety culture survey as a quick fix (its not).  Worse yet, organizations that could benefit most from safety culture assessments—the ones with the least organizational self-knowledge of or commitment to fostering excellence in safety culture—are unlikely to engage in safety culture assessments. 

For the right operation and the right reasons formal safety culture assessments are valuable.  However, safety culture surveys and audits aren’t always the best way to improve workplace health and safety.  Other initiatives that focus on safety training, improving safety mindedness, or updating the safeguards, barriers, and work processes that protect workers (and others in the workplace) from harm can have a more immediate and larger impact on safety for similar costs.

There is a potential trap in using safety culture assessments as the basis for organizational change.  The assessment is narrow, applying to the management and employees of an organization in one context: the workplace.  Safety culture assessments do not typically encompass safety attitudes and beliefs beyond the workplace; nor do these audits or surveys typically reach into the community, shareholder base, customer population or supply chain to include the views of these powerful influencers of workplace safety and health. 

Each safety culture assessment tool is also very specific.  The components of safety culture assessed, the questions asked and the way the results are presented or reported is unique to the assessment tool used.  The choice of assessment tool should be an intentional, informed decision that takes into account the reasons for doing the safety culture assessment and the plans for how you plan to use the results.  If the plan includes multiple assessments over time (to gauge the impact of interventions aimed at changing the safety culture over time, for example), then the initial selection of the safety culture assessment tool is critical;  using different assessment instruments may yield very different results.

Administering a safety culture assessment does not automatically lead to building a strong safety culture.  At best, safety culture assessments are indirect means to improving workplace safety and health.  The outcome of the safety culture assessments are measures across several dimensions.  The measures may identify areas of relative strength and weakness in the safety culture.  What you do with that information does not automatically flow from the results.  The assessment may provide and impetus for improvement or change but that is not the same thing as making the workplace safer.  Even if the audit or survey reveals areas that would be amenable to improvement, someone still has to prioritize the opportunities and win budgetary/operational support to invest in them. If there is no will to act on the results of a safety culture assessment, there is little value in doing one.

Safety culture assessments are not costless.  Even if a safety culture assessment instrument is “free”, the time and effort costs can be significant.  Could an equivalent effort have a bigger impact?  Quite possibly; there is, after all, an “opportunity cost” for any assessment.  Alternatives such as introducing wellness programs, supporting initiatives to increase individual “safety mindedness”,  investing in safety training, and acting on “near miss” reports may all increase workplace safety for the equivalent cost/effort investment.   

Safety culture is not the sole determinant of workplace health and safety.   No safety culture assessment is a panacea.  If you think your injury rate will drop just because you engage in a safety culture survey or audit, think again.  The safety culture assessment can provide a starting point but the real work begins after that.   

For the right organization, the right reasons and the right plan, a safety culture assessment can be a great starting place for improving safety.  For others, an equivalent investment in more direct action may be a more effective way to improve both workplace safety and safety culture. 

Ten questions to ask before a safety culture assessment:

1.       Why do we want to measure our safety culture?
2.       What expectations will be created by conducting a safety culture assessment?
3.              What alternative time-effort investments could achieve this purpose?
4.               Is a safety culture assessment likely to tell us something we don’t already know?
5.               Which safety culture assessment tool should we use?
6.                Who will be included in the process?
7.                 How much will the assessment cost (including the cost of the instrument as well as the time and effort to administer, analyze and report the results)?
8.                How, when and with whom will the results presented or shared (internally and externally)?
9.               How will the results be used?
10.                 Is this assessment intended to be a one-time assessment or part of a series of assessments over time?

How do you develop leading indicators for occupational safety and health?

Most of us are familiar with the concepts of “lagging” (sometimes referred to as “trailing”) and “leading” indicators from the world of economics. GDP and “average duration of unemployment claims” tell us about where we have been and, therefore, are generally considered lagging indicators of the relative health of the economy. Housing starts and permits are great examples of leading indicators. If these are rising, the demand for labour and supplies to build the new housing units is likely to rise in the near future. As the housing units are completed, demand for consumer goods like furnishings to fill them is also likely to rise.



The power of leading indicators is obvious to those gauging current conditions and making plans. If housing starts are rising, retailers of furniture and appliances are more likely to increase orders and hire new staff; manufacturers are likely increase production and inventories in anticipation of rising demand.


In workers’ compensation and OH&S, traditional measures tend to be lagging indicators. Injury rates, injury counts, and “days injury free” are, at best, lagging indicators of safety—they may tell us something about where we were but little (if anything) about where we are going. These measures are heavily weighted to the past and may mask serious safety and health risks in the current workplace. Developing leading indicators at the operational, sectoral and even jurisdictional levels helps focus resources and attention where it is most needed and provides early signals of the effectiveness of current programs or initiatives.


To design a leading indicator, you need a logic model, a framework that takes into account the near-term, mid-term and long-term objectives that will lead you to your goal.


Suppose your goal is a safer, healthier workplace and you have an objective of reducing strain injuries in your manufacturing plant. You might want to start by identifying the factors that lead to these injuries. Ergonomics is an obvious factor but you could get more granular or more general in your consideration. Loads, repetitions, and workstation design might be factors at the individual level while work procedures, the pace of work, and safety culture might be important factors at the operational or corporate levels.


Now that you have a model of how the injuries occur, you can think about interventions at the causative level that will contribute to greater prevention. Perhaps you have been convinced as I have that safety culture is vitally important and you have initiatives to improve safety culture in your operation. Annual external audits or random quarterly surveys could help you determine both the current climate and trend over time. If your model is correct, improvements in your safety culture will lead to outcomes like improved adherence to safe work procedures, more safety-oriented content in supervisor-worker interactions, more rapid time from hazard identification to removal—all of which have been proven to reduce injuries and make workplaces safer and healthier.


Other examples of leading indicator metrics for the objective of reducing strain injuries I’ve come across in industry include:

• % of workstation ergonomic evaluations completed

• % of employees/supervisors trained in ergonomics

• % of ergonomic action items addressed

• % of employees engaged in fitness and wellness program


Developing a logic model and selecting a leading indicator forces you to understand your business, how injuries occur and what research tells us will prevent them. That understanding is critical for good management as well as OH&S.



Don’t bother developing logic models, selecting leading indicators, and continually measuring indicators if you think it will be easy. Making the time and effort is hard but worthwhile.



My favourite quote on this topic makes the point very well:

"Measurement is the first step that leads to control and eventually to improvement.

If you can't measure something, you can't understand it.

If you can't understand it, you can't control it.

If you can't control it, you can't improve it.”


- H. James Harrington (Author, columnist, a Fellow of the British Quality Control Organization and the American Society for Quality Control).

Can you rewire your safety culture?

I was invited to deliver the keynote presentation at the “Make It Safe” conference a few days ago. The event was hosted by the FIOSA-MIOSA Safety Alliance of BC, the Canadian Manufacturers & Exporters of BC, and WorkSafeBC.




The FIOSA — MIOSA Safety Alliance of BC, is a not-for-profit industry organization that seeks to address challenges and opportunities specific to food & beverage processing and manufacturing and to set industry standards for health and safety.



The industries represented in the room were ideal for my topic, “Rewiring your Safety Culture.” Most participants had great safety backgrounds, but my goal was to take their thinking about safety beyond the lagging indicators such as injury free days, injury counts, and reportable injury frequency rates. The manufacturing sector has made huge strides in improving safety and health but to take the industry to the next level of safety will mean rewiring the way we think about safety and how we measure our progress.



Manufacturing has been the focus of much research on safety culture. The rich research in this sector provided me with examples from oil refineries, commercial bakeries, electronics manufacturing, and metal fabrication to illustrate my point.



I also happen to like James Reason’s work on human factors because I find it connects with audiences. Briefly, his “Swiss Cheese” model is widely used and easy to visualize. Reason conceptualizes the barriers, safeguards and defences (like training, supervision, safe work procedures, and equipment design) that protect workers as being imperfect with holes of varying sizes and location representing active and latent gaps in the protection. Workers can only get hurt when the hazard in the work environment follows a trajectory through the holes to harm the worker.



Adding “Six Sigma” (an innovation born in the manufacturing sector) to Reason's model allowed the audience to visualize my argument for a rewired safety culture. They agreed that active defects in training, supervision, adherence to safe work procedures can be eliminated or reduced by applying the Six Sigma methodology.



Taking Reason’s model, I argued for a re-conceptualization of the holes as “defects” in the barriers, safeguards, and defences that would protect workers from harm. Six Sigma methodologies are all about reducing variation and improving processes to ensure defects fall below the 3.4 million per million level. Through improvements in training, supervision, and adherence to safe work procedures, we can reduce the number, and size, of defects in these defences and reduce the probability of harm to workers. As defects approach Six Sigma levels, injuries to workers will approach zero. Selecting leading indicators consistent with the approach completes a rewired approach to safety and safety culture.



In this competitive world, the one big question audiences ask about rewiring their thinking about safety and changing their safety culture, relates to costs. The good news is that most of this rewired thinking about safety is not expensive. Small investments and equipment can have a big effect. The big change is in mindset; the big benefit is in saved lives, lowered costs, and improved productivity.



Because my job for much of the last thirty years has involved environmental scanning, I collect stories and examples from other jurisdictions. One of my current favourites from the manufacturing world is for Simms Fishing Products. WorkSafeMT has highlighted this small manufacturing firm in a video available on YouTube that makes the point: it is possible — and worth it — to rewire your safety culture.



Take a look at the video and take the next step: start rewiring!

What keeps workers safe?

I’ve spent many days enjoying the view of False Creek and the Roundhouse Community Centre from an apartment near the top of a residential tower in Vancouver’s Yaletown district. The stunning views of sparkling waters, emerald parks and gleaming residential towers are amazing. The natural beauty of the area has a lot to do with that but I can’t help but notice the thousands of workers that are involved in building and maintaining the structures, green spaces, waterways and infrastructure.

Recently, I’ve focused on the crews refurbishing the exterior decks and maintaining the rails on neighbouring towers. As I look down from the 26th floor, I can see the swing stages raise and lower workers to the various levels. What was keeping these workers safe on the job? There are standards in the regulation that apply but words on paper are not what keep these workers safe. So, what does?

Clearly, design is a big factor. The scaffolding and rigging are carefully designed to match the structure’s shape, secure and stabilize the scaffold, and minimize gaps through which a worker could fall. The guardrails and fall restraint systems are designed with worker protection in mind.

Design alone is not enough to keep these workers safe. For design to be effective there has to be safe work procedures. I watched as workers transferred their tethers, donned masks during grinding, descended during windy spells or approaching thunderstorms. Design and adherence to safe work procedures work together. But was that really what was keeping these workers safe?

I began to think about the human elements that were involved. These workers knew what they were doing. They appeared to be well trained, knew how to handle the work stage and the order in which things were to be done. Still, knowing what to do is only part of what was keeping the workers safe. Attitude plays a role, too.

Supervision was certainly present on the site. I observed interactions between workers and supervisors and, when the wind was blowing in the right direction, could overhear what was said. Safety-oriented content was often part of those conversations—not always the main point but usually part of the discussion. There was the occasional direction to check a cable or adjust a load but was supervision what kept these workers safe? Or was it a cultural thing—was it a strong safety culture that was really what was protecting these workers from harm?

The old locomotive turntable at the Roundhouse has now been equipped with a mechanical retractable canopy for shade and performances. At the rear of the canopy mechanism in meter-high letters are the words “Safety First”. Whether you interpret these words as an admonishment, a reminder or an aspiration, “safety first” fits well with what I see through the window: It is not one thing that keeps workers safe, it is all of these. Safeguards, barriers, and defences like training, supervision, design and safe work procedures are essential but a strong safety culture—putting safety first—is what keeps workers safe

When did you last witness safety trumping other considerations?

In popular culture, the opening sentence of a bad novel begins with the cliché phrase, “It was a dark and stormy night…”. Returning late last week from Washington, DC and a NIOSH workshop on the use of workers’ compensation data for occupational safety and health, I was stuck in Toronto-Pearson International Airport at dusk as the clouds darkened ominously. Through the boarding lounge window, I could see a wall of rain sweeping towards the terminal. On the top of every jetway, white strobes began flashing in unison. Over the handheld communicator a ground agent was carrying, I heard the announcement: the tarmac and apron were being cleared for safety reasons: lightning strikes from the dark storm clouds approaching YYZ.


The safety equation on this dark and stormy night was particularly evident. The inbound plane at our gate was a mere five meters from the jetway with a full manifest of passengers. At other gates, flights had been loaded and doors closed. Planes were still landing but backing up, still burning fuel, and clock time for aircrews. Connections were being missed, overtime incurred, and schedules overturned. Despite all these costs, all activity on the field stopped for the protection of ground crews.

Our lounge was full of passengers for Vancouver, BC or carrying on to Sydney, Australia. In almost perfect unison, thousands of people in Terminal 1 pulled smartphones and began checking connections and informing friends, families and colleagues of the indeterminent delay.

Here was an actual example of safety trumping other considerations. You can’t fuel an aircraft, load it with baggage and cargo, or push it back from the gate without workers and the risk of injury to a worker during a lightning storm is significant; an average of 57 people are killed each year in the US due to lighting strikes. Canada has shorter lightning seasons than in the US, yet lightening kills 9 or 10 people and injures between 100 and 150 people each year. Safety is about managing risks and managing the risks in this case means stopping airside operations.

How did people in my very crowded waiting lounge react? Most took the delay in stride. I heard one passenger actual say to the gate agent, “Worker safety should come first.”
After a couple of hours with intermittent starts and stops due to the storm, operations got going again. There was a huge backlog of flights. Our Air Canada flight 033 was fully loaded and had to wait 45 minutes after the doors closed before a crew was available for pushback.

Yes, we arrived home three or four hours later than planned… but we were safe and so were the crews that served us along the way.

There is nothing inherently safe about air travel. What makes it safe is a culture that values safety at every point, in the air and on the ground. Wouldn’t the world be a better place if we could day the same thing about every industry?

“There is nothing inherently safe about [building a bridge, lifting a patient, felling a tree…] what makes it safe is a culture that values safety.”

What’s the connection between complacency and risk?

It was a small thing, something noticed out of the corner of my eye, but the subsequent discussion got me thinking about what was really going on in the workplace and what it says about safety culture.


I was in a workplace the other day and noted the absence of a ground pin on an extension cord. I asked the worker using the cord about it and the worker told me it had been that way for a long time. He hadn’t said anything to anyone about it. His supervisor had used the same cord and did not say or do anything about it. He had not been shocked and his equipment kept working. “So, what’s the problem?” he asked.
The absence of injury is not the same thing as the presence of safety. The extension cord with the missing ground pin is clearly unsafe. It creates a defect in one of the important safeguards, barriers and defences in the workplace that are there to manage the inherent risks. Why didn’t the worker, the supervisor or somebody else do something about it?
On possibility could be intentional neglect. Perhaps the supervisor knows about the safety implications of the missing pin but puts production at a higher priority. There is no excuse for intentionally putting workers at risk. Intentional neglect should be sought out and regulations enforced. Another possibility is ignorance. Perhaps the worker and the supervisor are truly unaware of the risk posed by the missing ground pin. We can do something about unintentional neglect through awareness building, inspection and education. There is a third possibility, one that is more pervasive and, to my way of thinking, more dangerous: complacency.
Maybe, at some point, someone did notice the missing pin and did intend to do something about it. Perhaps they took the extra precaution of making certain only double-insulated equipment was plugged into the cord. Perhaps the cord was reserved for non-polarized, two-pronged plugs—at least until the cord could be repaired. Perhaps, as the days past, using the damaged cord just became a habit—with and without the precautions.

If every time a worker used a defective cord he or she received a mild shock, there would be immediate feedback about the defect. That, of course, would be ludicrous. We are fortunate that most new equipment is designed with redundancies like double insulation to protect workers. Safety, on the other hand, does not provide such immediate and personal feedback. In this case, every time the defective cord was used, the worker was not shocked (no negative feedback) and the equipment worked (positive reinforcement for continuing to use the defective cord).

An extension cord with a missing ground pin left in use and unrepaired may be symptomatic of complacency. If the corporate safety culture is complacent in small things, then how can we expect larger hazards to be recognized and risks controlled?

I recall one safety director encouraging his employees to submit notices to him about hazards they noted. No matter how small, he wanted to know about these hazards— he wanted hundreds every month. Random draws from submissions and regular recognition for submitters provided reinforcement for the program. Most of the notes he received were about small oil spills, broken guards, and unsecured equipment—and the notes usually indicated that the defect had been immediately fixed. The safety director explained the benefits of this approach. Sure, the minor issues are fixed but, more importantly, the approach fought complacency. Workers were attuned to safety and alert to hazards.

To finish off the story, I was back at the worksite the next day. The extension cord was fully repaired with a new, heavy-duty three-pronged plug. It was a small thing: a few dollars for the part, a few minutes for the repair. A small victory in the battle against complacency