Discourse Analysis, Safety Alerts and Safety Boards
There’s nothing quite like the tokenistic display of a safety alert. Go into any organization and see what’s on the safety notice board, observe the wall paper and then contemplate why people don’t take safety seriously. It’s like the safety industry has taken in all that is necessary for motivation, learning, visual learning, graphics and perception and then chosen to ignore it.
Discourse Analysis is a form of analysis that interrogates power in text. Discourse Analysis looks for ‘codes’ hidden in a simple cognitive reading and finds meaning in those codes that speak about the methodology (ideology) of the text. It is naïve to think that text is objective and doesn’t carry the biases of the writer and their economic, political and philosophical foundations. There is no such thing as neutral text and to think so is pure mythology. Discourse Analysis comes from a broad Transdisciplinary base (sociology, philosophy, anthropology, social psychology, linguistics, history of mentalities, semiotics and poetics). You can learn about Discourse Analysis here:
- https://lg411.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/discourse-analysis-full.pdf
- https://salahlibrary.files.wordpress.com/2018/09/discourse-analysis.pdf
- Discourse Analysis
Of course, the study of Discourse Analysis cannot be found in any safety curriculum
.
So, let’s return to that safety board and explore the core messaging in safety.
- The first thing that stands out is the repetitive message that ‘safety is about telling about objects’.
- The key messaging on safety boards is about ‘hazards’ (objects) and ‘controls’.
- Then there are the compulsory pinups of mistakes, accidents and often photoshopped images. Safety is about all that goes wrong.
- We most often see the colours of red on yellow or black on yellow to convey (https://www.verywellmind.com/color-psychology-2795824) power, authority and fear. None of which is conducive to learning or motivation. And why are safety boards maintained anyway? What is their purpose? What is their design? Does a person qualified in semiotics and learning maintain it?
- When we analyse the ‘tone’ of the safety alerts we never see the words ‘person’, ‘learning’ or language associated with care or helping. The message is often ‘look at what this clown did, don’t be like this clown’.
- And after you have read one of these ‘alerts’ you are none the wiser as they never speak about: cultural context, heuristics on site, influences on decision making, complexity in trade-offs and by-products, traditions, ethics, personhood, language on site, critical risks, collective unconscious, visual or special literacies, semiotics, expected cognitions, routine-habits, temperaments required in context or learning modalities.
- With none of this explored the basic message is about policing and blame.
- The key message that is also common is the old James Reason safety gems of: errors, violations and inattention. This is safety comfort language but it offers no explanation of decision making.
- Then there is the focus on engineering-objects and lectures on engineering, the perfect turn off for anyone interested in why people do what they do.
- We finally see some stock posters that reinforce the nonsense of ‘safety is a choice you make’ and ‘all accidents are preventable’.
This is the Discourse of the common safety board, most often does more harm than good. If you want to use a safety board and make it effective then perhaps use the above as a checklist and maybe someone might look at it and learn something one day.
Dr Rob Long
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Em says
If you’ve never seen one that works, could you provide an example of a good ‘alert’ that satisfies all of your above criteria?
How many organisations do you think have the ability to engage someone qualified in semiotics to maintain their safety notice boards?
Admin says
Hi Em – I’ll let Dr Long respond on your specific questions but when I see one I ask questions like: “Why do you need it/have it?”, “Is it effective?”, “Do you ever see anyone reading it, what feedback have you had/sought?”, “why are some things faded and dusty?”, “are there better ways to communicate?”, “what unconscious messages could you be sending?”, “Would you put something like this up at home?”
Rob Long says
Hi Em, thanks for your questions. In recent posts I have written about open and closed systems, motivation and learning. There are some good tips in these for a way forward.
The trouble is Safety develops so many things that are ineffective and then thinks they are regulated or necessary to manager risk, when they are not.
So many of the methods chosen by Safety are NOT regulated eg. inductions. It is one of the unfortunate spin-offs of being anchored to engineering that gets safety so bogged down in ineffective methods. In Safety it seems every time there’s a problem paperwork doubles. AS for safety ‘alerts’, why persist with a method when it doesn’t work. There are plenty of methods one could chose if one was interested in learning about learning. More so, why stick with a method that works in the opposite generating anti-learning or cultural negativity towards the safety industry?
If Safety was interested in motivation, communication, perception, care, helping and learning it would have to dump 80% of the nonsense that currently fills a safety qualification. Well, that won’t be happening, too much sunk already exists in the tonnes of ineffective stuff now.
Finding a good example of how to communicate for effective learning would require a complete shift away from the safety mindset of ‘telling’ to start with. Shoving alerts on a board is easy tick and flick set and forget stuff. There is nothing in any safety qualification that addresses the need for effective communication in organizations. Safety would need to step outside of its closed camp and take on a Transdiciplinary approach if it wants to learn about learning and communication.
If your organisation insists on having a notice board then seek out those disciplines that know about communication and learning if you are looking to promote learning.
As for semiotics, it is only one discipline amongst a few that knows how to communicate. Why is it that safety thinks it has to be the final word on method? The key is consultation across the disciplines, a tough thing to do in an industry that has been indoctrinated and anchored to ‘telling’.
DerrickBlacquiere says
Safety boards need to be more targeted and it should make your employees think about there safety of themselves and others in the industry.
Rob long says
Derrick, that would be good but I’ve never seen one that works!