Comparing Types of Risk Assessment
When it comes to risk assessment all templates look the same, as much a Safety loves templates, there is no value at all in duplicating someone else’s designed template.
The copying of templates affirms the ideology of the designer, cannot be ‘owned’ and cannot build competence in the user (https://safetyrisk.net/the-seduction-of-templates-set-and-forget/ ). Dependence on someone else’s risk assessment design simply confirms the bias of the designer and its underpinning philosophy, which most likely isn’t even known or owned by the designer, let alone the user. Most likely the template you copied was designed by an engineer.
An engineering-focused risk assessment has no cognizance of: persons, ethics, relationships, personhood, learning, Socialitie, the collective unconscious, heuristics or human ‘being’. The most common risk assessments in safety are: mechanical. linear, centred on objects (hazards), structured on tables and built on closed systems and structures.
If you search Google for ‘risk assessment template’ there are 750,000,000 results. If you click on images you get hundreds of pages that look like Figure 1 and Figure 2.
Figure 1.
Figure 2.
And what do we see? Checkboxes, tables to fill out and of course the obligatory nonsense risk matrix, the singular most unintelligent tool devised by Safety. If you want to improve risk assessment in one easy first step, get rid of that silly coloured box nonsense. What Greg Smith calls the most dangerous tool in the risk and safety (https://vimeo.com/166158437)! Just have a listen to Greg (or read his book Papersafe) and hear what he says about risk assessments and their contribution to defendability in court!
Of course, if you want to really waste your time collecting all your risks on a meaningless risk register do so, thereby affirming even more deeply an engineering framing of how risk is defined. Similarly, a hazard register, what a complete waste of time building up a database that will be used against you in court should something go wrong.
Perhaps have a look at what regulators and government agencies give out as risk assessment templates. It’s all the same:
- https://www.hse.gov.uk/simple-health-safety/risk/risk-assessment-template-and-examples.htm
- https://www.worksafe.qld.gov.au/safety-fundamentals/managing-risks/template
- https://www.safework.nsw.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0019/52741/form-4-site-specific-risk-assessment.pdf
- https://safetyculture.com/checklists/15-best-risk-assessment-checklists/
- https://healthandsafety.curtin.edu.au/risk-assessment/index.cfm
- https://covid19.swa.gov.au/covid-19-information-workplaces/industry-information/office/risk-assessment
There are literally thousands of templates online AND THEY ARE ALL THE SAME!
I wouldn’t give 2 squirts of diddly piss for any of them. All of them are looking for the wrong thing, all oriented towards engineering, all focused on objects, not one with a thought for social psychology or culture as determinants of risk.
So, once you have completed your template, signed it off and filed it away, what do you know? Have you covered off the risk? No! What is the correlation between what was documented in paperwork and reality in the field? Not much as most coronial inquiries and court cases discover.
Most of this stuff plays beautifully into the culture of ‘set and forget’ and ‘tick and flick’. Here’s a few questions to consider:
- Has the risk assessment considered critical heuristics enacted unconsciously as part of habituation?
- Has the risk assessment considered the way social dynamics determine choices and decision making under pressure?
- Has the risk assessment enabled the consideration of social and political relationships and determinants of decision making?
- Has the template defined risk adequately?
- Has the risk assessment thought about trade-offs and by-products associated with regulatory pressures?
- Does the risk assessment considered the nature of persons and social relations?
- Does the risk assessment enable the visualization of relationships between key stakeholders and persons in groups?
- Is there any thought about mental health included in the risk assessment?
- Does the risk assessment enable consideration of critical psychological and cultural factors as determinants of risk?
- Are unseen and invisible risks considered?
To help out, I’ve made this comparative table, for those who love tables:
How amazing that Safety thinks it has undertaken a risk assessment and doesn’t consider any of these critical factors. And then when things go wrong Safety throws up its arms in disbelief because it has been indoctrinated with all this engineering thinking that has defined safety as a behaviourist counting exercise.
Dr Rob Long
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Simon Di Nucci says
Hi Rob,
Fascinating article, thank you!
I agree that there are too many people ticking boxes without any understanding of what they are doing. However…
… many years ago the UK Defence Standard 00-56 had a risk matrix, which everybody copied blindly rather than creating and calibrating one for their application. To stop this from happening, DEFSTAN removed the matrix and a lot of other stuff that people used to copy. The problem was that with the new version many defense contractors simply didn’t know what to do. The result was that the standard of safety practice and documentation went down (I know because I was reviewing some of it).
This is the paradox of standards. Those (few) who really know their stuff don’t need them. But those (many) who aren’t sure what to do, really do need them. The utterly clueless can’t read them.
Now, there are better and worse templates (the best educate you and make you think), but if you want to help users get better and you need standardization, then templates can help. They are, at worst, a lesser evil than no templates/standards.
BRENT R CHARLTON says
Aside from the annoyance that people think they can predict the future, in my experience more effort goes into ensuring there are no red boxes than actually assessing risk. Red boxes mean someone has work to do so they are to be avoided at all cost.
Rob Long says
Brent, the idea that risk must be eliminated down to Zero is just one more of the silly myths of Safety. Risk is not the problem, its how we tackle risk that is the problem.
BRENT R CHARLTON says
I don’t disagree at all. I stopped doing these silly color code risk assessments years ago. They are useless to those doing the actual work.
Rob Long says
Greg Smith actually names the as the most dangerous habit of the safety industry. That is, they don’t provide a defense in court and neither are they defendable..
Sean Walker says
Hi Rob,
I better write my response here, rather than LinkedIn because you’ll have the safety peeps bombarding you with their silly nonsense. Safety has a cut and paste culture no doubt I have seen it first hand, oh that looks great I’ll add that in or they’ll basically copy a system or procedure if it looks better than there’s. Most Safety peeps don’t even understand risk, rather to out into the field and assess it, they Google it or ask someone for information and bastardise it to suit from an office no interaction or engagement with people. Safety does alot of things in isolation. Safety is not human focused, safety mgt systems are primed with their language and discourse to get their servants (safety peeps, sorry I can’t call them professional) to dehumanised with programs such BBS and Zero. Every Safety peep loves a good colourful risk assessment template,.
Rob Long says
Dean, I’m not on Linkedin for very good reason. I take no delight in the pooling of ignorance of the legion of safety crusaders telling me I don’t know anything. Amazing how a diploma in safety makes one an anthropologist, theologian, psychologist, sociologist and expert in everything from ethics to medicine.
When I was on LInkedin very few ever asked a genuine question, 99% of what I encountered was gaslighting, people trying to score points and pontificate, very few wanted to learn.
There are plenty who do want to learn and this keeps me flat out, a much better use of time.
If Safety was either professional or ethical it would engage, ask questions and who knows it might learn something more than colouring in the boxes on a useless risk matrix.