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

Safety Risk .net

Humanising Safety and Embracing Real Risk

Discover More on this Site

  • Home
    • About
      • Privacy Policy
      • Contact
  • FREE RESOURCES
    • FREE SAFETY eBOOKS
    • 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
  • PSYCHOLOGY OF SAFETY & RISK
    • 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
  • Covid-19
    • COVID-19 (Coronavirus) Health and Safety Slogans and Quotes for the Workplace
    • Covid-19 Returning to Work Inductions, Transitioning, Safety Start Up and Re Entry Plans
    • Covid-19 Work from Home Safety Checklists and Risk Assessments
    • The Hierarchy of Control and Covid-19
    • Why Safety Loves Covid-19
    • Covid-19, Cricket and Lessons in Safety
    • The Covid-19 Lesson
    • Safety has this Covid-19 thing sorted
    • The Heart of Wisdom at Covid Time
    • How’s the Hot Desking Going Covid?
    • The Semiotics of COVID-19 and the Social Amplification of Risk
    • Working From Home Health and Safety Tips – Covid-19
    • Covid-19 and the Hierarchy of Control
  • Dr Rob Long 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!
  • Quotes & Slogans
    • Researchers Reveal the Top 10 Most Effective Safety Slogans Of All Time
    • When Slogans Don’t Work
    • 77 OF THE MOST CLASSIC, FAMOUS and INFAMOUS SAFETY QUOTES
    • 500 BEST WORKPLACE HEALTH and SAFETY SLOGANS 2020
    • 167 CATCHY and FUNNY SAFETY SLOGANS FOR THE WORKPLACE
    • COVID-19 (Coronavirus) 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
    • 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

Censorship and Taboos in Safety

August 23, 2020 by Dr Rob Long Leave a Comment

Censorship and Taboos in Safety

One of the interesting things we do in SPoR workshops is an audit of language, just a simple psychoanalysis of words associated with a key word. For example, ask any group what they associate with the language of ‘safety’ and the responses are dominated by: controls, hazards, compliance, regulation, injury, fatality, SWMS, Risk Assessment, protection, Litigation, legal, training, PPE, Hierarchy of Control, duty, paperwork, rules, competence, ALARP and mitigation.

We usually start the activity with a brainstorm in groups, rank order by level of perceived importance and then transfer to sticky notes and place on a board see Figure 1. Recording and Sorting Process.

Figure 1. Recording Process.

image

We then look at the assembled language and see the collective discourse of the group. In a class of 20 people for example we would have 5 groups of 4 so 50 words listed on the board together see Figure 2. Language Discourse.

Figure 2. Language Discourse

clip_image004

What is fascinating about this activity is not the words present but what is absent from the list. Critical words such as: care, helping, trust, learning, listening, understanding, ethics, empathy, imagination, creativity and unconscious rarely make the list. If any of these words do make the list they usually amount to less than 5% of the total words listed.

What this audit demonstrates is a range of invisible social taboos that shape the language of the safety industry. This self-imposed silence on critical words for humanizing and professionalizing the industry acts as a form of social censorship. The higher up the career chain one goes the more one is likely to see the word zero. If ever this is done with people on the tools at the face where the real risk is, zero never appears. I have undertaken this activity with more than 25,000 people over the last 10 years. No-one who faces the most serious risks associates the language of ‘zero’ with safety.

It’s also fascinating how the safety industry cultivates ‘hard’ talk about risk and relegates people skills to ‘soft’ skills. The reverse is the case, it is a piece of cake to be mean and brutal to someone by demonizing their name or race but much harder to express care, help and tolerance for someone who doesn’t seem to understand the world as you.

The reason why social censorship prevails in this way in the safety industry is because the industry is the closed domain of a few disciplines. Just observe what happens when something goes wrong or an enquiry is required: first cab off the rank is a regulator, scientist or engineer, a sure recipe for keeping social censorship in place. The Brady Report and Boland Review are classic examples of ensuring everything stays the same, paperwork increases and the solution to safety is more systems.

We all censor language and we know we are doing it. When young children are about we all know what language doesn’t make it to airspace. People know know how to control their language consciously and this often leads to being able to maintain a certain discourse unconsciously. Similarly, those who hear their own children saying obscenities back to them learn quite quickly just how much their unconscious language takes effect.

In social contexts we all know what language is taboo and what is not. We learn this quickly in a group when we speak language deemed inappropriate. We all know what to say and NOT to say. This is why legislated warnings against gambling are stuck in the corner of a poker machine in gold on gold plaques in font 6. If you wandered around a casino talking about the harm of gambling, you would be soon ushered out the door. Casinos are places where we talk about winning, not misery, addiction and harm

When we examine cultural conventions for politeness and impoliteness we observe orthophemism (straight talking), euphemism (sweet talking) and dysphemism (speaking offensively). When my steel fixer mates are about it’s quite normal to ‘swear like a trooper’ and pretty soon you will be told to ‘drink a cup of concrete and harden the f*#k up princess’ if you start crusading about safety. I find it so entertaining when I hear regulators and managers run a campaign about ‘speaking up’ when they run a fear campaign on zero for the other 50 weeks of the year driving distrust, hiding and suppression.

When we are more savvy about what we are saying (https://safetyrisk.net/what-are-you-trying-to-say/ ) it is rarely the direct language that hits the unconscious. If the spoken word is incongruent with actions, symbols, artefacts or discourse then what message sinks in has nothing to do with the overt message that managers seem to think work. Most taboo is not learned overtly but covertly. Safety should have learned a long time ago that the medium is the message (https://web.mit.edu/allanmc/www/mcluhan.mediummessage.pdf).

The constructive way forward can’t come from the same old sources. You can’t get vision from consulting the same old source. You can’t seek improvement in safety discourse from regulation, science and engineering. None of these disciplines have any focus at all on the nature of language, discourse, socialitie and political ethics. This is not about throwing out the baby with the bathwater but rather expanding the horizons of an industry bogged down with little vision beyond more of the same.

No amount of measurement, IT systems or data is going to shift a culture bogged down in the language as evidenced at the start of this blog. We’re not going to humanize safety with nonsense language like Resilience Engineering, The discourse has to shift away from systems, numbers, metrics and objects, and this will only come when safety makes the move to a transdisciplinary notion of learning (https://safetyrisk.net/transdisciplinary-safety/; https://safetyrisk.net/the-value-of-transdisciplinary-inquiry-in-a-crisis/ ; https://safetyrisk.net/transdisciplinary-thinking-in-risk-and-safety/ ).

  • 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)

  • The ‘Feeling’ and ‘Being’ of Safety - April 13, 2021
  • Please Don’t Use the ‘F’ Word in Safety - April 13, 2021
  • The Voodoo of The Hoodoo - April 9, 2021
  • The Heinrich Hoodoo - April 8, 2021
  • Deconstruction and Reconstruction for Safety - April 4, 2021
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 this to a friend (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Telegram (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on WhatsApp (Opens in new window)

Related

Filed Under: Robert Long, Social Psychology of Risk, Work Method Statements Tagged With: hierachy of control, ppe, swms

Reader Interactions

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

Primary Sidebar

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

Visit Count – Started Jan 2015

  • 22,008,711 Visitors

Never miss a post - Subscribe via Email

Enter your email address and join over 30,000 other discerning safety people who receive notifications of new posts by email

Please take our 2 minute zero survey

Recent Comments

  • Admin on The Heinrich Hoodoo
  • Admin on The Gemba Safety Walk
  • Sean Walker on The Gemba Safety Walk
  • Wynand on The Heinrich Hoodoo
  • Admin on The Heinrich Hoodoo
  • Wynand on The Heinrich Hoodoo
  • Bernard Corden on The Voodoo of The Hoodoo
  • Bernard Corden on The Heinrich Hoodoo
  • Rob long on The Heinrich Hoodoo
  • Rob long on The Heinrich Hoodoo

FREE eBOOK DOWNLOADS

Featured Downloads

  • Deck_and_balcony_safety_guide.pdf (2812 downloads)
  • Following-Leading-in-Risk-SECTION-1.pdf (833 downloads)
  • Event Risk Management (418 downloads)
  • Risk-and-Safety-Schools-of-Thought.docx (2038 downloads)
  • Covid-19 Re-Entry Considerations (4475 downloads)
  • Health and Safety Risk Assessment Checklist (8550 downloads)
  • Risk-Life-Poster-SPoR.pdf (381 downloads)
  • Learning-How-to-Facilitate-Learning.docx (1786 downloads)
  • Europe-SPoR-Workshop-Flyer.pdf (205 downloads)
  • Blowin'-in-the-wind-03092019 (453 downloads)
  • How To Make Your Own Cloth Face Mask (187294 downloads)
  • Due-Diligence-Workshop-Nov-2018.pdf (302 downloads)
  • Mapping-Social-Influence-Strategies-diagram-A3-002.pdf (1234 downloads)
  • Manual-Handling-Checklist.doc (5116 downloads)
  • Electrical Equipment Risk Assessment (564 downloads)

Recent Posts

  • The ‘Feeling’ and ‘Being’ of Safety
  • Please Don’t Use the ‘F’ Word in Safety
  • The Voodoo of The Hoodoo
  • The Heinrich Hoodoo
  • CLLR Newsletter–April 2021
  • Deconstruction and Reconstruction for Safety
  • The Politics of Safety Legitimization
  • An Ethic in Error for Safety
  • Blinded by the Light
  • A Typical Safety eBulletin

Footer

AUTHORS

  • Alan Quilley
    • Heinrich–Industrial Accident Prevention
    • The Problem With ZERO Goals and Results
  • Bernard Corden
    • Blinded by the Light
    • Covid 1984 – The Shake Hands Maskerade and Vial Diplomacy
  • Bill Sims
    • Employee Engagement: Chocolate, Vanilla, or Strawberry?
    • Injury Hiding-How do you stop it?
  • Craig Clancy
    • Task Based vs Activity Based Safe Work Method Statements
    • Safety And Tender Submissions
  • Daniel Kirk
    • It’s easy being wise after the event.
    • A Positive Safety Story
  • Dave Whitefield
    • Safety is about…
    • Safety and Compliance
  • Dennis Millard
    • Are You Risk Intelligent?
    • Honey they get me! They get me at work!
  • Drewie
    • Downturn Doin’ Your Head In? Let’s Chat….
    • How was your break?
  • Gabrielle Carlton
    • All Care and No Care!
    • You Are Not Alone!
  • George Robotham
    • How to Give an Unforgettable Safety Presentation
    • How To Write a Safety Report
  • Goran Prvulovic
    • Safety Manager – an Ultimate Scapegoat
    • HSE Performance – Back to Basics
  • James Ellis
    • In search of plan B in workers’ recovery
    • What and how should we measure to support recovery from injury?
  • James Parkinson
    • To laugh or not to laugh
    • People and Safety
  • John Toomey
    • Who is Responsible for This?
    • Who Are Your People?
  • Karl Cameron
    • Abby Normal Safety
    • The Right Thing
  • Ken Roberts
    • Safety Legislation Is Our Biggest Accident?
    • HSE Trip Down Memory Lane
  • Mark Perrett
    • Psychology of Persuasion: Top 5 influencing skills for getting what you want
  • Mark Taylor
    • Build a Psychologically Safe Workplace by Taking Risks and Analysing Failures
    • Enculturing Safety
  • Max Geyer
    • WHS Legislation is NOT about Safety it’s about Culture
    • Due Diligence Is Not Just Ticking Boxes!
  • Matt Thorne
    • It was the SIA until someone wanted to swing from the Chandelier
    • Common Sense is Remarkably Uncommon
  • Peter Ribbe
    • Is there “Common Sense” in safety?
    • Who wants to be a safety professional?
  • Phil LaDuke
    • Professional Conferences Are A Sleazy Con
    • Hey Idiots, You’re Worried About the Wrong Things
  • Admin
    • CLLR Newsletter–April 2021
    • Zero is not a Target or Vision, it’s a Language/Discourse
  • Dr Rob Long
    • The ‘Feeling’ and ‘Being’ of Safety
    • Please Don’t Use the ‘F’ Word in Safety
  • Rob Sams
    • I’m just not that into safety anymore
    • Social ‘Resiliencing’
  • Barry Spud
    • Barry Spud’s Hazard Control Tips
    • Researchers Reveal the Top 10 Most Effective Safety Slogans Of All Time
  • Sheri Suckling
    • How Can I Get the Boss to Listen?
  • Safety Nerd
    • The Block isn’t portraying safety as it should be
    • Toolbox Talk Show–PPE
  • Wynand Serfontein
    • Why The Problem With Learning Is Unlearning
    • I DON’T KNOW
  • Zoe Koskinas
    • Why is fallibility so challenging in the workplace?

FEATURED POSTS

Collaborating, Cooperating and Cohesion in Risk

Europe – International Workshop Social Psychology of Risk Introduction

Free Download – Real Risk – New Book by Dr Robert Long

Sensemaking and ‘Hapori’ – Essential for Tackling Risk in New Zealand

It’s a Great Goal, it Just Doesn’t Work

The Unconscious and the Soap Dispenser

Challenges and Opportunities for Learning in a Crisis

Perfectionism in Safety and the Denial of Humanity

Understanding Risk

The Fear of Power and the Power of Fear

20 Cognitive Biases That Affect Risk Decision Making

Expecting the Unexpected

The Psychology of Conversion – 20 Tips to get Started

Beware of Hazardous ‘OINTMENT’

Safety Leadership Training

Don’t Dare Speak the ‘f’ Word

Measurement in Safety, You’ve Got it All Wrong

Why is fallibility so challenging in the workplace?

Two Week Intensive Workshops 5-16 August 2019 Canberra

Tattoos, Taboos and The Risk of Permanence

More Posts from this Category

Paperwork

https://vimeo.com/162034157?loop=0

Due Diligence

https://vimeo.com/162493843?loop=0

loading Cancel
Post was not sent - check your email addresses!
Email check failed, please try again
Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.