• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

SafetyRisk.net

Humanising Safety and Embracing Real Risk

  • Home
    • About
      • Privacy Policy
      • Contact
  • FREE
    • Slogans
      • Researchers Reveal the Top 10 Most Effective Safety Slogans Of All Time
      • When Slogans Don’t Work
      • CLASSIC, FAMOUS and INFAMOUS SAFETY QUOTES
      • 500 OF THE BEST AND WORST WORKPLACE HEALTH and SAFETY SLOGANS 2023
      • CATCHY and FUNNY SAFETY SLOGANS FOR THE WORKPLACE
      • COVID-19 (Coronavirus, Omicron) Health and Safety Slogans and Quotes for the Workplace
      • Safety Acronyms
      • You know Where You Can Stick Your Safety Slogans
      • Sayings, Slogans, Aphorisms and the Discourse of Simple
      • Spanish Safety Slogans – Consignas de seguridad
      • Safety Slogans List
      • Road Safety Slogans 2023
      • How to write your own safety slogans
      • Why Are Safety Slogans Important
      • Safety Slogans Don’t Save Lives
      • 40 Free Safety Slogans For the Workplace
      • Safety Slogans for Work
    • FREE SAFETY eBOOKS
    • Free Hotel and Resort Risk Management Checklist
    • FREE DOWNLOADS
    • TOP 50
    • FREE RISK ASSESSMENT FORMS
    • Find a Safety Consultant
    • Free Safety Program Documents
    • Psychology Of Safety
    • Safety Ideas That Work
    • HEALTH and SAFETY MANUALS
    • FREE SAFE WORK METHOD STATEMENT RESOURCES
    • Whats New In Safety
    • FUN SAFETY STUFF
    • Health and Safety Training
    • SAFETY COURSES
    • Safety Training Needs Analysis and Matrix
    • Top 20 Safety Books
    • This Toaster Is Hot
    • Free Covid-19 Toolbox Talks
    • Download Page – Please Be Patient With Larger Files…….
    • SAFETY IMAGES, Photos, Unsafe Pictures and Funny Fails
    • How to Calculate TRIFR, LTIFR and Other Health and Safety Indicators
    • Download Safety Moments from Human Resources Secretariat
  • Social Psychology Of Risk
    • What is Psychological Health and Safety at Work?
    • Safety Psychology Terminology
    • Some Basics on Social Psychology & Risk
    • Understanding The Social Psychology of Risk – Prof Karl E. Weick
    • The Psychology of Leadership in Risk
    • Conducting a Psychology and Culture Safety Walk
    • The Psychology of Conversion – 20 Tips to get Started
    • Understanding The Social Psychology of Risk And Safety
    • Psychology and safety
    • The Psychology of Safety
    • Hot Toaster
    • TALKING RISK VIDEOS
    • WHAT IS SAFETY
    • THE HOT TOASTER
    • THE ZERO HARM DEBATE
    • SEMIOTICS
    • LEADERSHIP
  • Dr Long Posts
    • ALL POSTS
    • Learning Styles Matter
    • There is no Hierarchy of Controls
    • Scaffolding, Readiness and ZPD in Learning
    • What Can Safety Learn From Playschool?
    • Presentation Tips for Safety People
    • Dialogue Do’s and Don’ts
    • It’s Only a Symbol
    • Ten Cautions About Safety Checklists
    • Zero is Unethical
    • First Report on Zero Survey
    • There is No Objectivity, Deal With it!
  • THEMES
    • Psychosocial Safety
    • Resiliencing
    • Risk Myths
    • Safety Myths
    • Safety Culture Silences
    • Safety Culture
    • Psychological Health and Safety
    • Zero Harm
    • Due Diligence
  • Free Learning
    • Introduction to SPoR – Free
    • FREE RISK and SAFETY EBOOKS
    • FREE ebook – Guidance for the beginning OHS professional
    • Free EBook – Effective Safety Management Systems
    • Free EBook – Lessons I Have Learnt
  • Psychosocial Safety
    • What is Psychosocial Safety
    • Psychological Safety
      • What is Psychological Health and Safety at Work?
      • Managing psychosocial hazards at work
      • Psychological Safety – has it become the next Maslow’s hammer?
      • What is Psychosocial Safety
      • Psychological Safety Slogans and Quotes
      • What is Psychological Safety?
      • Understanding Psychological Terminology
      • Psycho-Social and Socio-Psychological, What’s the Difference?
      • Build a Psychologically Safe Workplace by Taking Risks and Analysing Failures
      • It’s not weird – it’s a psychological safety initiative!
You are here: Home / Robert Long / By What Measure? Safety?

By What Measure? Safety?

February 26, 2023 by Dr Rob Long 2 Comments

Originally posted on November 29, 2022 @ 1:14 PM

safety measurementI gave up the world of ‘publish or perish’, peer reviewed journals and university club validation when I witnessed a dozen academics create their own journal, club and association and publish hundreds of papers together. Then all used the volume of publications for advancement and a pathway to power.

The best way to win a game is to ‘gamify’ the rules and use them for a desired outcome.

The idea that constructed measures are neutral, objective and valid hinges on the acceptance of a group that validates its own bias. The projects validation from the assumptions of their own measures.

I’m not going to get into the sordid tales of the way academia works but simply to say it has its own validation process (game) to guarantee its own assumptions. Publishing the same information across 10 journals under different titles is neither a demonstration of intelligence, creativity, innovation or expertise. And that’s how the system works. If that’s the sector you wish play, good luck to you but don’t tell me my research is invalid because it doesn’t match your mythology of peer reviewed journals.

Similarly, in the schooling system we know that standardised testing doesn’t work and is indeed, anti-learning, anti-creative and anti-education:

· https://dianeravitch.net/2019/04/30/ken-robinson-standardization-crushes-the-spirit-of-education-and-of-learners/

· https://www.gallup.com/education/237284/time-try-opposite-standardized-testing.aspx

· https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kW-6h0eKqbc&t=39s

and there are hundreds of voices in Education that confirm this (https://www.humandymensions.com/product/tackling-risk/). BTW, no one in the profession of Education or Teaching calls this ‘schools bashing’.

The truth is, political initiatives like NAPLAN (https://www.nap.edu.au/) develop their own circular proofs of testing methods that have very little to do with learning , education or intelligence (https://theconversation.com/lets-abandon-naplan-we-can-do-better-95363).

Whenever a regime of measures is thrown about the first thing that should be done is questions its assumptions and what ideology is advantaged by it.

All measures carry hidden assumptions, political agenda and an undeclared ideology. This is the same for safety.

Nothing is clearer than injury rates are NOT a measure of safety.

Yet, the belief that they do, swamps the safety industry like a religious belief based on mythology concocted as if set in concrete.

Any measure that is thrown at us requires questioning and critical thinking. Just ask some critical questions of the measure and see where (telos) it takes you. So:

· If injury rates go up and down in an organisation does that mean safety improves and declines at the same rate?

· What is selected as a measure and what is excluded?

· What is defined as an injury? Eg. Psychological or social harm? Suicide? Trauma? PTSI?

· What group validates the measure? What is their political and ethical interest?

· Does the measure deliver a moral outcome?

· What does the measure do to persons?

· Can the measure be ‘doctored’?

· What does it NOT measure?

Of course:

In NAPLAN, every critical skill and attribute for becoming a responsible, mature and developing person are NOT measured!

Having a PhD in teaching doesn’t mean you are a good educator!

Keeping injury rates to zero doesn’t mean you are on a safe worksite!

All a measure does is affirm the assumptions of the measure. Most often it doesn’t affirm what is attributed to it. Such is the safety code (https://safetyrisk.net/deciphering-safety-code/).

Just because someone talks and writes about ‘safety culture’ or has a PhD, doesn’t mean they have expertise in culture (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMvYgJMH7tA). Most of what gets paraded about as expertise in safety culture is just more Scientism, Engineering and Behaviourism.

The key is to not listen for the noise but for the silences (https://safetyrisk.net/if-you-want-to-know-about-culture-dont-ask-safety/).

If you know how to think critically and how to listen to the silences, you will soon realise very little of what is projected is about culture (https://safetyrisk.net/category/safety-culture-silences/ ).

Just because the global world of safety sets its mantra as zero, affirms zero as a religious belief and worships the gods of metrics/numerics, doesn’t mean any of it true or helpful. Even when Safety condemns zero it still seeks out other measures for validation, which is still an addiction to measurement (https://safetyrisk.net/the-measurement-mindset-in-safety/).

All this silly talk of lead and lag indicators, is still anchored to the addiction of attributed measures.

A wonderful method for hiding a deep need for critical thinking and, to interrogate the attributions embedded in such thinking, is to hide the ideology of metrics. Safety remains an industry of quanta (https://safetydifferently.com/todd-conklin-quanta-risk-and-safety-conference-2019/) with precious little skill or expertise in qualia. If your love is quanta, then there’s nothing ‘different’.

I don’t care what your measure is for safety, if the culture lacks trust (https://safetyrisk.net/speak-up-reporting-and-trust-in-safety/) you have an unsafe workplace. And, trust can’t be measured. Same for hope, respect, helping, listening, happiness, contentment, wisdom, care etc.

All of this focus on ‘quanta’ has been created and endorsed by an industry addicted to Engineering. This is the foundation of the safety curriculum and body of knowledge (https://safetyrisk.net/why-is-safety-an-easy-target/).

The assumption of the safety curriculum is that safety is about the management of objects and the reporting of metrics. Then all the measures in the world that follow simply endorse the engineering assumptions of the curriculum but it has precious little to do with safety. Then with these measures in mind out comes all the commentary on culture from a mindset that declares culture are confusing and all too hard. Most of the commentators on culture come from this safety mindset and don’t even realise they continue to carry all the safety baggage when talking about culture.

In SPoR, we work with all of this and tackle the challenges of measures in risk here:

https://cllr.com.au/product/learning-community-and-the-social-psychology-of-risk-unit-7/

Once again, SPoR provides practical tools, methods and strategies for tackling risk and all these resources are free.

  • Bio
  • Latest Posts
  • More about Rob
Dr Rob Long

Dr Rob Long

Expert in Social Psychology, Principal & Trainer at Human Dymensions
Dr Rob Long

Latest posts by Dr Rob Long (see all)

  • What’s Your Agenda in Safety? - May 26, 2023
  • When Safety Delights in ‘I Told You So’! - May 24, 2023
  • Beware the Cult of Denial - May 23, 2023
  • Understanding Safety as a Cultural Reproductive Process - May 23, 2023
  • Thinking Outside the Safety Bubble - May 21, 2023
Dr Rob Long
PhD., MEd., MOH., BEd., BTh., Dip T., Dip Min., Cert IV TAA, MRMIA Rob is the founder of Human Dymensions and has extensive experience, qualifications and expertise across a range of sectors including government, education, corporate, industry and community sectors over 30 years. Rob has worked at all levels of the education and training sector including serving on various post graduate executive, post graduate supervision, post graduate course design and implementation programs.

Please share our posts

  • Click to print (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)

Related

Filed Under: Robert Long, Social Psychology of Risk Tagged With: measurement

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Leon Lindley says

    November 29, 2022 at 2:22 PM

    I had forgotten how much I enjoy your pieces Rob, and I totally agree with your statements. For 30 years I have seen ridiculous lag / lead indicators dictating what is supposed to be a safe workplace, and have become so tired of the Safety Religions touted as being the Saviour of all. I have often been pressured to keep quiet and follow blindly the Zero cultures and have been made an outcast for speaking out. So, it is always nice to find a kindred spirit. Keep up the good work Rob.

    Reply
    • Rob Long says

      November 29, 2022 at 6:20 PM

      Thanks Leon, much appreciated. Glad you appreciate the positive and constructive messages of this site.

      Reply

Do you have any thoughts? Please share them below Cancel reply

Primary Sidebar

Search and Discover More on this Site

Never miss a post - Subscribe via Email

Enter your email address and join other discerning risk and safety people who receive notifications of new posts by email

Join 7,523 other subscribers

Recent Comments

  • Rob Long on It is NOT My Responsibility to Keep You Safe
  • Chris. on It is NOT My Responsibility to Keep You Safe
  • Pierre Joubert on Zero Doesn’t Work, Road Fatalities Increase
  • James on We are all equal
  • Rob Long on We are all equal
  • James Parkinson on We are all equal
  • Brent Charlton on What Does Safety Achieve?
  • Admin on We are all equal
  • James Parkinson on We are all equal
  • Rob Long on What Does Safety Achieve?
  • Brent Charlton on We are all equal
  • Brent Charlton on We are all equal
  • Brent Charlton on We are all equal
  • Brent Charlton on What Does Safety Achieve?
  • Simon Cassin on You Can Fool Someone Some of the Time but, You Can Fool Safety All of the Time
  • Simon Cassin on You Can Fool Someone Some of the Time but, You Can Fool Safety All of the Time
  • Rob Long on You Can Fool Someone Some of the Time but, You Can Fool Safety All of the Time
  • Rob Long on You Can Fool Someone Some of the Time but, You Can Fool Safety All of the Time
  • Rob Long on You Can Fool Someone Some of the Time but, You Can Fool Safety All of the Time
  • Rob Long on You Can Fool Someone Some of the Time but, You Can Fool Safety All of the Time

RECOMMENDED READING

viral post – iso 45003 and what it cannot do

Introduction to SPOR – FREE!!

Psychosocial Safety and Mental Health Series

It is NOT My Responsibility to Keep You Safe

The KISS of Death in Safety

Is Your Safety World Too Small?

You Can Fool Someone Some of the Time but, You Can Fool Safety All of the Time

When Safety (Zero) is Abusive

Hands Up the Best Safety Fraud!

Communicating Professionally in Risk

How NOT to be Professional in Safety

How NOT to do Anything About Culture in Building and Construction

Celebrating 60 Years of Lifeline

More Posts from this Category

NEW! Free Download

Please take our 2 minute zero survey

FREE eBOOK DOWNLOADS

Footer

VIRAL POST – The Risk Matrix Myth

Top Posts & Pages. Sad that most are so dumb but this is what safety luves

  • Free Safety Moments and Toolbox Talk Examples, Tips and Resources
  • 500 OF THE BEST AND WORST WORKPLACE HEALTH and SAFETY SLOGANS 2023
  • CATCHY and FUNNY SAFETY SLOGANS FOR THE WORKPLACE
  • Ratio Delusions and Heinrich’s Hoax
  • Road Safety Slogans 2023
  • How to Calculate TRIFR, LTIFR and Other Health and Safety Indicators
  • FREE RISK ASSESSMENT FORMS, CHECKISTS, REGISTERS, TEMPLATES and APPS
  • Safety Acronyms
  • 15 Safety Precautions When Working With Electricity
  • What Is Safety?

Recent Posts

  • What’s Your Agenda in Safety?
  • When Safety Delights in ‘I Told You So’!
  • Beware the Cult of Denial
  • My Story is Better than Yours
  • Understanding Safety as a Cultural Reproductive Process
  • The Unconscious and the Soap Dispenser
  • Thinking Outside the Safety Bubble
  • Understanding Language Influencing, A Video
  • Safetie
  • You are NOT the Sum of Safety
  • Update on SPoR in India, Brazil and Europe
  • It is NOT My Responsibility to Keep You Safe
  • Safety at the Margins
  • Research Basics for Safety
  • We Need Communities and They Need Us
  • Researching Within The Safety Echo Chamber
  • Confirmation Bias, Risk and Being Offensive
  • Lemmings for Lemmings in Leadership and Risk
  • Expertise by Regurgitation and Re-Badging
  • Zero Doesn’t Work, Road Fatalities Increase
  • Can There Be Other Valid Worldviews Than Safety?
  • Evaluating Value by the Value of What You Don’t Know
  • Reality vs Theory, The Binary Divide
  • No Paradigm Shift with BBS
  • The KISS of Death in Safety
  • Is Your Safety World Too Small?
  • What Does Safety Achieve?
  • In Praise of Balance in Risk and the Threat of Extremism
  • We are all equal
  • You Can Fool Someone Some of the Time but, You Can Fool Safety All of the Time
  • What in the (Risk & Safety) World is Imagination?
  • iCue Engagement Process
  • SPoR, Metanoia and a Podcast on Change with Nippin Anand
  • For the Monarchists of Safety
  • The Sully Effect
  • All Things Must Pass in Risk
  • Scapegoating and Safety
  • Understanding Habit, Habituation and Change
  • Don’t Mention the War
  • Safety in Design for Who by Who?
  • Beyond ‘What We Do Around Here’
  • Asking the Wrong Questions
  • When Safety (Zero) is Abusive
  • Mandala as a Method for Tackling an Ethic of Risk (a Video)
  • Safety Cosmetics
  • Visualising the EHS Role
  • Towards Dumb
  • Workshops with Dr Long – Vienna, Austria 26-30 June 2023
  • Visual, Verbal and Relational Mapping in Risk Assessment
  • Abduction in Risk and Safety

VIRAL POST!!! HOW TO QUIT THE SAFETY INDUSTRY

FEATURED POSTS

Free Two Chapter Download and Book Competition

Human Factors Factors

Talking Risk Video–The Unconscious In Communication

The Idealization of Humans and The Zero Delusion

Personhood and Risk

No Soft Skills in Safety

The Mechanistic Worldview and the Dehumanisation of Risk

Organising to Manage Uncertainty in an Unpredictable World

The Shaping of SPoR Intelligence, Skills and Competence in Risk

Are You on The Safety Teat?

Mandala as a Method for Tackling an Ethic of Risk (a Video)

Deconstruction and Reconstruction for Safety

The Fear of Power and the Power of Fear

Dumbs for Safety

The Safety Worldview and the Worldview of Safety, Testing Due Diligence

OnLine Learning Modules with CLLR

The Strange Challenge of Unlearning in Safety

Safety Isn’t Sexy, and it Shouldn’t Be!

SPoR Quarterly Newsletter September 2021

The Sound of Safety

The Mystery and Paradox of Being an Individual in a Social World

Speaking a New Language in Safety

Not Much Like Safety…

Psycho-Social and Socio-Psychological, What’s the Difference?

Safety Utopia as Abuse

The Curse of Behaviourism

Risk Psychometrics, Spin and Snake Oil

Breaking the Safety Code

Framing Folly and Fantasy in Safety

The Social Psychology of Risk Event Exploration (Investigation) Knowledge

The Futility of the Centralised Safety Management System?

SPoR Convention Canberra 18-21 September 2023

The Last Thing is, Don’t Start with Safety

The Safety Worldview

A Philosophy of Safety

Semiotics and the Unconscious Messages We Send

Thinking About Harm

Something Different To Safety

Understanding Safety Myths

Coronavirus and the Dunny Paper Effect

More Posts from this Category

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Enter your email address and join other discerning risk and safety people who receive notifications of new posts by email

Join 7,523 other subscribers

How we pay for the high cost of running of this site – try it for free on your site

WHAT IS PSYCHOLOGICAL SAFETY?

What is Psychological Safety at Work?


WHAT IS PSYCHOSOCIAL SAFETY

x
x