Every safety decision – good and bad – is influenced by the environment in which it is made.
Just about every organisation in existence likes to talk the talk when it comes to improving workplace safety.
However, when it comes to implementing improvements, it is very clear that precious few are willing to walk the walk.
Safety programs are only ever targeted at one level of the workplace hierarchy. And the logic in doing that is based on an idea that does not pass muster when it is even briefly analysed.
Assumptions of autonomy
Just about every safety campaign that has ever existed has focussed sharply on part of every worksite – the people on it doing the work.
There are good reasons for this. When an accident at a workplace happens, the person that suffers the physical injuries because of that is the worker.
The message is always the same: use the safety equipment, take your time, make the better choice and things of that ilk.
That is all well and good, but it does seem to pigeonhole workers as being the sole reason that accidents happen. That they make deliberate and considered choices to do the dangerous thing.
What the problem is with this is that much of this focus assumes that workers are exercising massive amounts of agency within their roles. That they have a large freedom of choice as it comes to when and how they go about their work.
The reality is that this is not at all the case. Workers act in and as part of different social structures that exert influence over their behaviour.
What can influence workers’ choices?
So why is it that workers have much less agency than might otherwise be believed?
Well, for a start they are told what to do and when it will be done by their employer. Generally, the employer will also provide instruction around how the work is to be done.
Once a worker arrives on site, their ability to access the work area is determined by the site manager or lead contractor. Conditions on access may also be imposed. This can include time limitations, number of team members allowed in the area or something else entirely.
The key point is that the worker, before they have even picked up a tool to start work, are already operating within a set of constraints imposed on them by external forces.
Taking a step further back, the influences on workers can start much earlier than when they arrive on site.
An employer must ensure their workers have the skills and equipment necessary to complete the work they are required to do and to safely access the areas where that work is to be undertaken.
All too often, these aspects of work are not taken seriously by an employer. A team may be sent for some rudimentary safety training and the most basic of equipment and PPE. They are then sent on their way.
When it comes to planning and quoting on the jobs themselves, the employer is incentivised to make the quotation as competitive as possible. This can mean making projected timelines extremely tight. These timelines do not allow for the almost inevitable delays and tasks taking longer than expected. When these do occur, the worker is placed under extreme pressure to push through and get the job completed. This then leads to unsafe actions being taken.
Across the board safety
The focus of safety improvements cannot be levelled solely at workers.
By understanding the structures workers operate within, and the influences they are subjected to, it is clear that safety conversations need to be wider, they need to go further. It needs to include more people across the entire work chain.
Decisions are not made in a vacuum, and bringing real safety to the workplace requires this becoming part of the thinking when improvements are argued for. Workers do not just go out and make poor safety decisions for the sake of it.
