How Psychological Safety May Help Your Employees With Hazard Identification

For many organisations, hazard identification is one of the most examined aspects of a Health and Safety Management System. Within that process exists a plethora of small moving parts, that all interact in one way or another, and which play a significant part in how healthy and safe the employees in those organisations really are. It will come as no surprise to many readers that hazard identification is also one aspect of H&S that can frustrate senior leaders. A lot of training, time and energy is put into getting employees engaged in the hazard identification process and yet incidents still occur, even when hazards have been identified and controlled. When it comes to hazard identification, there are some gold nugget findings that have come from recent peer reviewed research in applied settings. Looking to these gives us a reliable starting point from which to move from.

In most industries, hazard identification is a necessary skill each worker must possess. Interestingly, it’s a skill that is poorly correlated with the training that is meant to enhance it (Bhandari et al., 2016). This hints at other cognitive factors being in play when workers are engaging in hazard identification. We already know that situational awareness is our brain’s own built in, natural, hazard identification and risk assessment process (Hallowell, 2020). When we tap into the inner workings of that process, we can start to see where the vulnerabilities may exist in our work-based hazard identification processes. A longitudinal study which was conducted across the construction industry in America (Hallowell, 2020) discussed two findings which give us insight into the cognitive limitations of how we identify hazards in a workplace.

1. In pre-task hazard identifications, workers were only able to identify 45% of the hazards they would interact with throughout their task.
2. Hazard recognition blind spots were consistent and predictable, regardless of trade, education or experience.

Both findings were attributed to the differences in instinct based hazard recognition vs. conscious thought-based hazard recognition. Nearly half of all hazards present can be detected by our brain’s natural environment scanning capability. However, some hazards are more sophisticated or complex in how they present to us, which makes it harder for our brain to detect them. So, what is commonly referred to as complacency and sometimes laziness, can be attributed to a cognitive limitation, present in everybody. There are some hazards we are just not wired to spot, easily. Spotting those ones takes extra effort, systemic support and deliberate, conscious thought. So where does that leave the worker who isn’t having a good day, or who may have their mind on other things? More hazard identification training is not the answer.

On the days when our team members aren’t feeling too good, or are juggling distractions, we need an environment where they can raise the flag, without hesitation or fear of negative consequences. A hazard ID is only as good as the level of situational awareness present in the person completing it. The cognitive processes associated with situational awareness and decision making are sensitive to stress. A study measuring the interaction of these factors with air traffic controllers found that when stress levels increased, situational awareness decreased which had a direct, negative impact on decision making (Trapsilawati et al., 2020). But what if we could hit the stop button, right before the less than helpful decision is made? At that point where the person can feel they are stressed and recognises that stopping is the safest option in that moment. Imagine a workplace where that was business as usual.

A person’s willingness or comfort in speaking up or stopping a job is wholly reliant on the level of psychological safety present in the team at the time. Defined by Professor Amy Edmondson as “a belief that one will not be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns, or mistakes, and the team is safe for interpersonal risk-taking.” When people feel a healthy degree of psychological safety, they are more likely to admit to feelings of stress, reduced mental capacity and most importantly, they will be empowered to stop a task or process if they don’t feel safe or able to give it the attention it deserves (Edmondson, 2019). When people talk about a good health and safety culture, I think what they mean is a team of people who have a healthy level of psychological safety amongst them. They can ask for help, seek clarification and stop if they need to. People are still accountable for engaging in the required processes, but that accountability is balanced with radical candor, where leaders challenge directly and care personally (Scott, 2019). Because of our known hazard identification limitations, it's imperative that we approach this crucial H&S activity with people as the core focus – how can we best support our frontline workers in conducting quality hazard identification assessments, knowing they are likely to miss present and emerging hazards, through no fault of their own, and that exposure to stress will exacerbate this.

To support you in exploring the content of this article in the context of your organisation or team, I have listed focus questions you may like to discuss with your team:

1. How are we managing the relationship between stress and situational awareness and its direct impact on our frontline employees’ ability to conduct quality hazard identification?
2. Does our current wellbeing programme or mental health support programme consider frontline safety outcomes that are largely influenced by cognitive processes?
3. How are we risk assessing this in our psycho-social risk assessments?
4. What current methods do we have for checking that people are in a good state of mind to conduct hazard identification assessments?
5. What markers do we have that would indicate someone is experiencing reduced situational awareness?
6. On higher risk or critical risk jobs, what layers of control have we got to account for approximately half of the hazards present or to emerge, being missed?
7. Do we have a reliable and accurate measure of psychological safety in our team?
8. Do we understand the direct impact psychological safety can have on our health and safety processes and people’s willingness to engage in them?
9. Have there been incidents in the past where people made mistakes and attributed those to stress, but continued with the task in the lead up to the incident?

References

Bhandari, S., Hallowell, M., Van Boven, L., Gruber, J. & Welker, K. (2016). Emotional States and Their Impact on Hazard Identification Skills. Construction Research Congress.

Edmondson, A. (2019). The fearless organization: Creating psychological safety in the workplace for learning, innovation and growth. Wiley.

Hallowell, M. (2020). The Energy Wheel: Review of the art and science of energy-based hazard recognition. [Whitepaper].

Scott. K. (2019). Radical candor: Fully revised and updated edition: Be a kick-ass boss without losing your humanity. St. Martins Press.

Trapsilawati, F., Herliansyah, M.K., Nugraheni, A.S.A.N.S., Fatikasari, M.P. & Tissamodie, G. (2020). EEG-Based Analysis of Air Traffic Conflict: Investigating Controllers’ Situation Awareness, Stress Level and Brain Activity During Conflict Resolution. The Journal of Navigation. 73:3, 678-696.