• 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 / Communication and Consultation / Congruence in Messaging in Safety

Congruence in Messaging in Safety

June 13, 2021 by Dr Rob Long 4 Comments

Congruence in Messaging in Safety

Study in Semiotics demonstrates that congruence in messaging improves communication, incongruence creates miss-messaging. In order for communication to be effective there needs to be congruence not just in text, language and discourse (power in language) but also in para-linguistics (gesture, image, icon and symbol). The medium of the message is just as important as the message (https://safetyrisk.net/the-medium-is-the-message/ ).

I find it fascinating that Safety without any expertise in communication to the unconscious believes that language and images bear no relationship to each other. Research by McNeil (Gesture and Thought) demonstrates the opposite (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/229068064_Gesture_and_Thought ).

All forms of messaging are intertwined and simultaneously communicate to the conscious and unconscious Mind. So, it pays to understand not just linguistics but also para-linguistics and all forms with which we communicate, this includes Semiotics. The following semiotic shows where Semiotics sits within the Social Sciences:

image

Unfortunately, most of these trans-disciplines are lost on Safety as it is completely locked into to the mono-disciplinary STEM approach to knowing.

Imagine trying to communicate peace, helping and care for humans and using a swastika as the symbol? Imagine using a stop sign to communicate movement and learning? Imagine using icons of objects and hope to message care of persons? This is what Safety does (https://safetyrisk.net/the-iconography-of-safety/ ) and then hopes that people will somehow be motivated to safety! Imagine using all the traditional language of safety, safety tools and icons of PPE, systems and objects and then calling it ‘differently’. Imagine that the language of resilience is somehow connected to engineering. This is what Safety does. Then wonders why the message doesn’t catch on.

When Safety gets involved in messaging it seems that all of the research available on para-linguistics is deemed irrelevant.

Imagine wanting to connect and motivate women to safety and using the icon of a shoe. Imagine wanting to convey a feminist approach to safety and using masculinist images to do so? How does this make sense? When the discourse (power in language) is incongruous with the language and para-linguistics, all messaging is lost. What is most absorbed by the unconscious is the contradiction not the message. BTW, there is nothing in either the AIHS BoK or WHS curriculum that helps with the basics of communication, messaging and engagement effectiveness. Nor will you find any perspective from the disciplines represented in the concept map above in the general discourse of safety.

If you do a search for images in safety it’s never about people or conversation, it’s about objects. Safety is known as the discipline that polices objects. Have a look at any of the institutions that hand out safety awards, the iconography is about objects: boots, glasses and high-viz, that’s how non-innovation is communicated. Good old stasis, nothing changes, all is compliant. But that’s OK because the awards usually go to institutions that invent some new way of controlling objects.

Have a look through a text in safety and it’s still Heinrich (https://safetyrisk.net/ration-delusions-and-heinrichs-hoax/ ) pyramids, swiss-cheese and a host of images about numbers. All of this concocted stuff is not just incongruous with people but promotes images that lead people away from safety into the delusions symbolized in zero. None of this works (https://www.humandymensions.com/product/it-works-a-new-approach-to-risk-and-safety/ ). None of this demonstrates Due Diligence (https://vimeo.com/manage/showcases/3938199/info ). None of this is a defence in court should something go wrong.

However, there are many positive things you can do, that work. This will mean unlearning the indoctrination fed at safety and taking on skills and learning in communication that are evident in trans-disciplines as represented in the concept map above. Even with just a little study in Semiotics and critical thinking, there might be some hope that congruence between conscious and unconscious messaging might be possible.

Due Diligence from Human Dymensions on Vimeo.

  • 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)

  • Culture and Risk Workshop – Feedback - March 24, 2023
  • Practical Case Studies in SPoR Presented at Vienna Workshops - March 21, 2023
  • Risk iCue Video - March 20, 2023
  • Rethinking Leadership in Risk - March 20, 2023
  • Gesture and Symbol in Safety, the Force of Culture - March 20, 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: Communication and Consultation, critical thinking, Due Diligence, Robert Long, Semiotics Tagged With: linguistics, safety message

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Keith Miller says

    June 14, 2021 at 3:13 AM

    Hi Rob, Another very interesting article, but I think the root cause of this is that we use the ‘safety’ label for too many things and we need to differentiate between engineering and operational safety. The most important part of safety is to engineer the system as safely as possible in the first place, and that requires us to apply the hierarchy of controls, which starts with objects to achieve inherent safety, only moving on to human factors and organisational controls when all technical solutions have been exhausted. The engineer may need to look at both the technical and human aspects, but the operator really only deals with the human. We need a different language for each.
    It’s like calling both football and rugby field games, but safety seems to be content with ambiguity and I rarely see anyone making this differentiation, perhaps because they like to think that their ideas will apply to both.

    Reply
    • Rob Long says

      June 14, 2021 at 8:29 AM

      Keith, I think in some ways you are right. When I use the word Safety I intend it to be understood as an archetype, a very common convention in language. So, I capitalise to make this clear. Many people in safety also do this but don’t draw any distinction or definition in how they use the word. Linguistics is not something Safety does well. Similarly Engineering or operational safety, are both elevated in safety to some kind of hierarchical authority when such is simply an attribution, as is also the hierarchy of control. All assumed and accepted according to the assertions of the safety industry as if somehow some infallible truth. I don’t believe safety is about engineering systems or applying a hierarchy of controls, both assumptions of safety indoctrination, as is the idea that one ‘moves on’ to human factors.
      All of this is premised on accepting a Safety worldview anchored in a pathetic curriculum and history of engineering as the source of safety. I think safety would be in much better shape if engineers and all this hierarchical stuff was put back in its place and an ethical and transdisciplinary approach to persons was considered.

      Reply
    • Admin says

      June 14, 2021 at 8:59 AM

      Is safety a noun or a verb? An activity or an outcome?

      Reply
      • Rob Long says

        June 14, 2021 at 9:26 AM

        A participle, archetype, trope and ideology (zero). all of he above.

        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 7,516 other subscribers

Recent Comments

  • Leon Lindley on Liking and Not Liking in Safety, A Tale of In-Group and Out-Groupness
  • Rob Long on Entertainment, Suckers and Making Money From Safety
  • Rob Long on Celebrating 60 Years of Lifeline
  • Gregg Ancel on Entertainment, Suckers and Making Money From Safety
  • Rob Sams on Celebrating 60 Years of Lifeline
  • Rob long on Liking and Not Liking in Safety, A Tale of In-Group and Out-Groupness
  • Rob Long on Liking and Not Liking in Safety, A Tale of In-Group and Out-Groupness
  • Rob Long on Liking and Not Liking in Safety, A Tale of In-Group and Out-Groupness
  • Rob Long on Liking and Not Liking in Safety, A Tale of In-Group and Out-Groupness
  • Admin on Liking and Not Liking in Safety, A Tale of In-Group and Out-Groupness
  • Leon Lindley on Liking and Not Liking in Safety, A Tale of In-Group and Out-Groupness
  • Admin on Liking and Not Liking in Safety, A Tale of In-Group and Out-Groupness
  • Mariaa Sussan on Liking and Not Liking in Safety, A Tale of In-Group and Out-Groupness
  • Brian Darlington on Liking and Not Liking in Safety, A Tale of In-Group and Out-Groupness
  • Leon Lindley on Liking and Not Liking in Safety, A Tale of In-Group and Out-Groupness
  • Narelle Stoll on Liking and Not Liking in Safety, A Tale of In-Group and Out-Groupness
  • Narelle Stoll on Liking and Not Liking in Safety, A Tale of In-Group and Out-Groupness
  • Brian Edwin Darlington on SPoR Workshops Vienna 26-30 June
  • Rob Long on How to Manage Psychosocial Risks in your organisation
  • Brian Edwin Darlington on Jingoism is NOT Culture, but it is for Safety

RECOMMENDED READING

viral post – iso 45003 and what it cannot do

Introduction to SPOR – FREE!!

Psychosocial Safety and Mental Health Series

Celebrating 60 Years of Lifeline

Liking and Not Liking in Safety, A Tale of In-Group and Out-Groupness

Duty of Care is NOT Duty to Care (for persons)

Safety, Ethics, SPoR and How to Foster the Abuse of Power

Psychosocial Spin – Naming Bad as Good, Good Work Safety!

How to Manage Psychosocial Risks in your organisation

The Delusions of AI, Risk and Safety

Health, the Poor Cousin of Safety

Psychosocial Health Conversations – Three

Conversations About Psychosocial Risk – Greg Smith, Dr Craig Ashhurst and Dr Rob Long

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

  • 500 OF THE BEST AND WORST WORKPLACE HEALTH and SAFETY SLOGANS 2023
  • Free Safety Moments and Toolbox Talk Examples, Tips and Resources
  • CATCHY and FUNNY SAFETY SLOGANS FOR THE WORKPLACE
  • Road Safety Slogans 2023
  • 15 Safety Precautions When Working With Electricity
  • How to Calculate TRIFR, LTIFR and Other Health and Safety Indicators
  • Safety Acronyms
  • Download Safety Moments from Human Resources Secretariat
  • CLASSIC, FAMOUS and INFAMOUS SAFETY QUOTES
  • Free Risk Assessment Template in Excel Format

Recent Posts

  • Culture and Risk Workshop – Feedback
  • Practical Case Studies in SPoR Presented at Vienna Workshops
  • Risk iCue Video
  • Rethinking Leadership in Risk
  • ‘Can’t Means Won’t Try’ – The Challenge of Being Challenged
  • Gesture and Symbol in Safety, the Force of Culture
  • Human Factors is Never About Humans
  • Celebrating 60 Years of Lifeline
  • Smart Phone Addiction, FOMO and Safety at Work
  • Entertainment, Suckers and Making Money From Safety
  • Breaking the Safety Code
  • The Futility of the Centralised Safety Management System?
  • Liking and Not Liking in Safety, A Tale of In-Group and Out-Groupness
  • Risk iCue Video Two – Demonstration
  • Radical Uncertainty
  • The Safety Love Affair with AI
  • Safety is not a Person, Safety as an Archetype
  • Duty of Care is NOT Duty to Care (for persons)
  • What Can ‘Safety’ Learn From a Rock?
  • Safety, Ethics, SPoR and How to Foster the Abuse of Power
  • Psychosocial Spin – Naming Bad as Good, Good Work Safety!
  • SPoR Workshops Vienna 26-30 June
  • What Theory of Learning is Embedded in Your Investigation Methodology?
  • How to Manage Psychosocial Risks in your organisation
  • Risk You Can Eat
  • Triarachic Thinking in SPoR
  • CLLR NEWSLETTER–March 2023
  • Hoarding as a Psychosis Against Uncertainty
  • The Delusions of AI, Risk and Safety
  • Health, the Poor Cousin of Safety
  • Safety in The Land of Norom from the Book of Nil
  • Psychosocial Health Conversations – Three
  • Conversations About Psychosocial Risk – Greg Smith, Dr Craig Ashhurst and Dr Rob Long
  • Jingoism is NOT Culture, but it is for Safety
  • CLLR Special Edition Newsletter – Giveaways Update
  • The Disembodied Human and Persons in Safety
  • 200,000 SPoR Book Downloads
  • What SPoR Network is.
  • Trinket Safety
  • How to Know if Safety ‘Works’
  • Due Diligence is NOT Quantitative
  • SPoR Community Network
  • Conversations About Psychosocial Risk Session 2 – Greg Smith, Dr Craig Ashhurst and Dr Rob Long
  • The Psychology of Blaming in Safety
  • By What Measure? Safety?
  • Safe Work Australia a Vision for No Vision
  • Do we Need a Different Way of Being in Safety?
  • Non Common Sense Mythology
  • Language Shapes Culture in Risk
  • What Does Your Risk and Safety Icon Say?

VIRAL POST!!! HOW TO QUIT THE SAFETY INDUSTRY

FEATURED POSTS

Understanding The Social Psychology of Risk And Safety

Rhythms, Musicophilia and Safety

Deepwater Horizon and The Suppression of Risky Conversations

Zero Suicide and the Discourse of Denial

Why we make mistakes

Language Shapes Culture in Risk

The Safety Control Delusion

Understanding Conscience and Safety

Safety as Policing

The Shock of Homeostasis

By What Method Do You Tackle Risk?

Is there “Common Sense” in safety?

Be Alert, Safety Needs More Lerts

Certificate, Diploma and Masters Studies in SPoR

The Different Levels of Wrongness!

Risk and Safety as a Social Psychological Problem

The Quantitative and Qualitative Divide in Safety

What is Your Risk iCue?

Brain-Centredness and Occular-Centredness in Risk

Why Safety is Inescapably Theological

The Psychology of Leadership in Risk

Zero Accident Vision Non-Sense

Clarity Enabled

Risk and Safety Matrices and the Psychology of Colour

Social Sensemaking – Free eBook

Social Psychology of Risk in Canada

Risky Conversations – Free Download

Workshop – Understanding Culture Tackling Risk

The Allure of Submission

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

Moral Fundamentalism in Safety

The Convenience of Complacency

I’ve got a feeling this isn’t right, but…..

Free Books – 66 Downloads for Tackling Risk

The Sacred Bra Tree

New Video Explains Cognitive Dissonance and Safety

Toilet Roll Safety

C. G. Jung on Risk and Safety

20 Cognitive Biases That Affect Risk Decision Making

Humanising Workplace Health and Safety Management

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 7,516 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