Originally posted on June 26, 2021 @ 10:52 AM
Culture, Toxicity and Safety
There are several reasons why Safety in its current state will never deal effectively with mental health:
· The mis-definition of culture and,
· The brutalism of zero
The only way to drive for zero is to:
· Suppress reporting (learning)
· Focus on petty risk
· Blame and punish minor offences
· Sing the song ‘all accidents are preventable’
· Chant the mantra ‘Safety is a choice you make’ and,
· Attribute meaning to injury rates
The safety definition of culture as ‘what we do around here’ drives the most profound ignorance of what really happens in the collective unconscious. Unless semiotics is taken seriously in a definition of culture than anyone wishing to tackle toxic culture is likely to be looking in the wrong place and take actions that will be ineffective (https://safetyrisk.net/the-visible-and-invisible-in-risk-and-culture/; https://safetyrisk.net/culture-is-not-what-we-do-around-here/ ). When culture is made behaviours then all of the vital indicators of culture are relegated to irrelevance. In this way Safety can:
· Use language as if it has no meaning or trajectory
· Portray violent metaphors, symbols and semiotics as good
· Talk of professionalism as if ethics are not foundational
· Maintain myths of militarism
· Policing safety systems
· Disregard violence and power in the enactment of safety
· Gloss over worldviews/ideology as if of no importance
· Bully persons as a pathway to zero
All of these factors combine to create toxic cultures and sub-cultures in organisations. Whenever we undertake an SPoR Language Audit or on-site observation, the evidence for these factors is overwhelming. The result of course is increased anxiety and depression in the workplace and this is anchored back by Safety onto the worker as if the culture of the organisation has no connection to ideology/worldview. Such is the grand delusion of zero.
What a strange thing that the ideology of zero creates the harm it so often professes to care about.
Toxic Culture Exacerbates Depression at Work by 200%
A year-long Australian population study has found that full time workers employed by organisations that fail to prioritise their employees’ mental health have a threefold increased risk of being diagnosed with depression. This is demonstrated by The University of South Australia study, published in the British Medical Journal today, led by UniSA’s Psychosocial Safety Climate Observatory, the world’s first research platform exploring workplace psychological health and safety.
Psychosocial safety climate (PSC) is the term used to describe management practices, communication, non-leadership and systems that protect workers’ mental health and safety. High levels of burnout and workplace bullying are also linked to corporations’ failure to support workers’ mental health. The Report also found that low PSC is a predictor of bullying, brutalism and emotional exhaustion. The key to effective communication is of course listening, and the promotion of a safety culture of ‘telling’ pervades the sector. The crazy thing is that whilst the International Labour Organization (ILO) call for a human-centred approach in the Commission on the Future of Work, they see no connection to the toxification of workplaces through zero, their darling of safety delusion. Any viewing of the Spirit of Zero (https://safetyrisk.net/the-spirit-of-zero/) will give you ample measure of just how delusional zero is.
How to Create a Healthy Culture for Safety
You will no doubt see course paraded about safety about ethics, culture and professionalism. None of these countenance for one second the criticality of a semiotic understanding of culture. Unless Safety engages in a Transdisciplinary approach (https://safetyrisk.net/transdisciplinary-thinking-in-risk-and-safety/) to culture it is likely that what you are attending is a behaviorist rant on safety systems. So, what can you do?
- The first cab of the rank is to ditch the mechanistic, behavioristic paradigm that dominates a safety understanding of culture. How strange what Safety proclaims about addressing culture when it looks in the wrong place for outcomes.
- The second thing is to step outside of safety genre, AIHS BoK and literature for knowing about culture. The AIHS BoK chapter on Culture is NOT a good guide to thinking about culture. There are simply so many holes and gaps, it is of little value. Similarly, for understanding Ethics. The BoK Chapter on Ethics is a great guide on what NOT to do.
- Start reading externally to safety for knowing about culture. Perhaps start with Lotman, (2013) The Unpredictable Workings of Culture or anything by Gregory or Mary Bateson eg. Steps to an Ecology of Mind (https://monoskop.org/images/6/65/Bateson_Gregory_Steps_to_an_Ecology_of_Mind_1987.pdf). You won’t find these kinds of texts in the AIHS BoK or WHS Curriculum. Or, perhaps just start with something on the nature of Transdisciplinarity (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/238606943_The_Nature_of_Transdisciplinary_Research_and_Practice).
- Start exploring some of the great stuff in cultural theory and cultural studies (https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/4151/1/Cultural_Theory_Intro_etc.pdf; https://monoskop.org/log/?p=14627)
- Start by looking into the many aspects of culture neglected by safety (https://safetyrisk.net/safety-and-risk-culture-cloud/) and consider using observational/semiotic tools for understanding culture. The SPoR iCue Audit is a very helpful tool for opening up holistic understandings of culture. This vital tool is one of the outcomes of the CLLR (https://cllr.com.au/register-to-study/) module on Culture leadership (https://cllr.com.au/product/culture-leadership-program-unit-15/).
- Start to explore the Collective Unconscious (https://safetyrisk.net/learning-wisdom-from-the-collective-unconscious/) and think much more about culture as an ‘invisible force’ that has a life of its own. It also helps top personify the language of culture and think more about Archetypes at work in your organization.
- Start by looking at: artefacts, myths, linguistics and Poetics in your organization as critical indicators of culture. In many ways, these are the starting point for addressing issues of toxicity in culture.
- Of course, the most important thing is to reject the discourse and semiology of zero, injury counting and binary propaganda of zero. These are the primary source of brutalism in organisations.
So, there you are plenty to do that is constructive, positive and effective. If you want to read a case study of how SPoR ‘works’ in an organization in reforming culture you can look here: https://www.humandymensions.com/product/it-works-a-new-approach-to-risk-and-safety/ There will be no ‘help’ coming from Safety for mental health unless Safety starts tackling how it defines culture and how zero toxifies organisations. The 50 years history of DuPont is evidence of exactly what Zero does to organisations (https://safetyrisk.net/dark-waters-the-true-story-of-dupont-and-zero/).
Brent Charlton says
I find it interesting that in the first part of this article you touch on some things that match up with what the human and organizational performance practitioners use as principles: 1. Error is normal – even the best people make mistakes; 2. Blame fixes nothing – we can blame or learn but not both; 3. Learning and improving are vital – learning must be deliberate; 4. Context influences behavior – systems drive outcomes, and; 5. How we respond to failure matters – how leaders act and respond counts. This drives us to have conversations with workers, stop telling and start asking (what do you need?), and to put more emphasis on learning about what happened prior to an accident (context) than on the accident or injury itself. We care about the person injured, of course, but focus on learning why what he or she did made sense to them at the time. HOP also looks at work going right, which is much more common than work going wrong, and what keeps it going right so that information can be shared. Conversations occur along the lines of “what could go not as planned, when (not if) it does can that hurt you, what are your defenses, and is that enough.” Gaps between work as imagined by engineers and managers and work as actually done by people is important because we know people have to flex and adapt all the time and do so mostly successfully. That’s a pretty short description of a complex process, but I’m interested in your thoughts.
Brent Charlton says
HOP also does away with the notion that all accidents are preventable
Rob Long says
Thanks Brent, I have been advocating some of these principles for over 20 years, nice to know others do too. However, not a big fan of the language of ‘performance’ or the cultural language associated with such linguistics.
I make no connection between the ecology of work, the collective unconscious and the discourse of ‘performance’ and the way engineering is tied to it in HOP.
The semiotics of performance is very different than what Safety or Business thinks of performance, and I don’t warm to the way HOP defines ‘performance’. The linguistics and semiotics of performance is radically different from this.
Yes, the moment you move away from simplistic safety, black and white binary nonsense you must become more wise and sophisticated in how you understand risk. In SPoR, persons are understood not through the lens of ‘systems’ nor systems thinking or engineering and from my understanding the HOP approach emerges out of a systems view of persons through organising and organisations.
I am not interested in ‘designing resilient systems’, I am interested in designing resilient persons. Similarly, I have no interest in humans as a ‘factor’ in a system. This is just orthodox conventional safety, there is nothing ‘new view’ about this.
If HOP gives a new language to engage in risk, I’d like to see it because the discourse sounds pretty familiar and traditional, very much system-centric, congnitive-centric and brain-centric in its lingusitics.
If HOP is a philosophy as it claims then where is its philosophy articulated? Principles are not a philosophy, nor and ethic. I can’t see a philosophy/worldview articulated anywhere.
Similarly the notion of ‘learning’ used by HOP is not what I connect to learning indeed, if a view of learning is developed through safety it is most likely not learning. I’d like to see what theory of learning HOP advocates? From what school of learning has it been developed.
Similarly, I don’t see anything in the HOP ‘method’ about effective listening, open questioning, layers of risk or the nature of the human, collective unconscious and semiotics. Again, what is the worldview of HOP? Where is it articulated? What is its view of personhood? Where is it articulated? What ‘ethic of risk’ does HOP advocate and where is that articulated? Similarly culture, how is that defined and articulated particularly in relation to learning etc. Would also like to see which theory of linguistics and language it comes from. How does HOP understand Discourse for example?
Unfortunately, reads so much like traditional safety to me.
Brent Charlton says
Thanks, Rob. Perhaps we can analyze it the upcoming ethics course!
Rob Long says
Sure, let’s put it on the agenda.
Might I also say you would benefit greatly from the Linguistics, Poetics or Collective Unconscious Modules. Often Safety speaks in certain ways that sound good but mask hidden intent in behaviourist/mechanistic agenda.
Wynand says
Is is not strange how the greatest supporters of Zero are also the people in the organisation with the means to distance themselves from it? The “lower” the level of the worker, the more likely he is to be bullied under the guise of Safety. I have seen an incident investigation being turned into an inquest, because the manager with the positional power just hijacked the meeting and nobody was in a position to counter this. The atmosphere in the meeting was one of visible fear, yet the manager walked out thinking the “investigation” was a success. Good luck in getting to the truth if your main tool is fear! I think most floor-level (i.e. often the most important) workers just try to isolate themselves from the bullying by just faking the issue and trying to stay under the radar as much as possible. Rob, do you see in your interactions that there is very limited, if any’ upwards (honest) communication, with workers just regurgitating what they believe their managers want to hear? I find it equally strange how blind managers are for the toxicity they create. If someone tells the the culture is toxic, they always place the blame somewhere else, typically with the very workers being the victims of the toxicity.
Rob Long says
Wynand, wherever there is zero there is no truth telling. Zero sets the linguistics for deception and under reporting. I helped out a mate recently who was a sub-contractor to a zero tier 1 company and nthey were conducting an inquisition into a slip and fall, no injury. The extent of the process was insane. So he asked for a witness to come into the meeting and I sat in and the National head of the company had flown down from Sydney for the meeting. They started the meeting and wanted to terminate his sub-contract based on this fall. I pulled out a recording device at the start and they asked what it was for. I told them that I would gladly testify against them in court at anytime in the future on the nature of their culture and would use the recording against them. I then articulated clearly what they were doing and that this toxic culture had got out of control and I would bring all my expertise against them should they want to proceed further.
The GM stopped for a minute in silence then called off the meeting, apologized to my client and nothing happened further about the incident.
This is what Zero does, and completely based on ignorance. Noone seems to know how to challenge it.
I was once on a podium withe a CEO of a teir one company and he was sprouting about zero before a few hundred people. Then after our presentations I was on a panel with him. After demolishing his rhetoric and nonsense binary logic with 2 questions he later admitted he had never been challenged before on zero and had no answer for my questions.