CELEBRATE THE DIFFERENCE
So as it turns out, each person is pretty unique. Nobody else has your DNA. So physically, unless you’re an identical twin, you are different from everyone else in the entire universe that has, does and will live (and even identical twins grow up with slight physical differences). But what about mentally? What about the way we think? What about our cognitive processing? Is that just as different from person to person?
There is certainly a huge amount of social psychology research that points us down that path. That clearly shows that we think differently, and of course just like the physical analogy described above, some of us are a long way apart, and others are quite close, but we still are not the same.
I’m sure we have all experienced an event or situation with others, and afterwards everyone has a slightly different interpretation of what happened. This is normal right? Famously, police become more suspicious if all witness statements agree.
OK, SO WHAT?
Right, so we probably all get, and have experienced, that people are fundamentally different when it comes to the way they think. Sometimes it’s what makes life interesting, and of course sometimes it can be the most annoying thing in the world (I am married and have two kids as my own personal continuous case study to back this up…).
Well, when it comes to safety I believe we need to take this into account. We need to realise that no two people looking at a worksite, or reading a work instruction, or completing a risk assessment, or listening to a toolbox talk, will think about it the same way.
WHY?
At a simple level we can probably work out where some of this difference comes from right? I mean, a lot of it can be put down to different levels of knowledge right? Well yes, and of course no. Again, two people with the same knowledge on a subject or situation won’t always make the same decisions all the time.
So then we start using words like perception, or attitude or experience to explain these differences in thinking. So again from a safety point of view, to ensure we get a consistent and predictable outcome (eg. a safe outcome), we need to take into account those differences…
WAIT, IT GETS WORSE
Hopefully you are with me so far, but here is where it gets tricky. From lots and lots of social psychology experiments, we not only know that people think differently in general, but we also know that they think differently under different personal circumstances.
Consider how differently you think and react to events when you are under pressure, or fatigued, or when you are hungry or thirsty, or under the influence of drugs or alcohol.
So now all we have to do is also take that into account when it comes to safety. We need to realise that everyone reading that 20 page SWMS has differing levels of knowledge; inherently thinks about things differently because they have difference perceptions and experiences; and that they may also think and process the information differently depending on their physical state, or the time of day, or whether they had a good breakfast.
WAIT, I HAVE SOME MORE BAD NEWS
I’m sorry to do this, but research also shows there is another thing to deal with… other people. You see, we are social animals, and so our thinking is influenced by other people’s behaviours (and of course vice-versa).
Again, there are many experiments carried out that show this. In laymans’ terms a simple example is peer group pressure. In psychological terms we call it a social conformity bias. In groups of people we are influenced to want to fit in rather than stand out. There is even a bias called the bystander effect where an individual is less likely to intervene in a risky or dangerous situation involving someone else when they are in a group, compared with when they are alone.
Both of these biases have a potential effect on safety through inhibiting intervention in unsafe situations. All up we have over 200 individual, group and social biases that influence our thinking and behaviour, and essentially we are completely unaware of them, but that is for another time.
THE SOLUTION – STEP 1
Embrace the difference. Don’t fight the fact that people are different. Don’t lament it. Don’t complain about it. Stop using terms like “common sense” that imply there is even a possibility of a common sense-making process. It just isn’t going to happen. Be OK with it because not being OK with the fact that other people think differently is a hard and frustrating way to get through life.
THE SOLUTION – STEP 2
Minimise the potential differences through the creation of shared experiences and expectations. Communicate. Engage with other people. Ask questions. Ask them what they see, what they think they should do, what they think the problem is, what they think the SWMS requires of them. Remove ambiguity by creating clarity around the behaviour you expect. Don’t just ask people to “be safe”, describe what safe looks like to you, and encourage that type of language within the team as well. You can use words like “appropriate” or “correct”, but everyone in the team must have absolute clarity on what that looks like in practice.
OBSERVE, QUESTION, ENGAGE, CLARIFY
People are different, and variable, and social. In my opinion it’s what makes life interesting, and it’s also what creates a lot of risk when we ignore it. Take the time to observe, question,
Safety Dave Whitefieldengage and clarify. Take the time to look and talk. I can’t predict what will happen, except that it will be different for everyone.
CORPORATE PROTECTION AUSTRALIA GROUP
“We need to realise that no two people looking at a worksite, or reading a work instruction, or completing a risk assessment, or listening to a toolbox talk, will think about it the same way.”
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