It’s Always About Paperwork

Oh, I get it. It’s not the problem of excessive paperwork, it’s just that you haven’t been filling it out properly. This is the core message of Useability Mapping (https://www.aihs.org.au/events/usability-mapping-masterclass ). The problem is not about paperwork itself but rather the method in completing it. You couldn’t make this stuff up and Safety rolls right along constructing more obligations, more paper-based extras and 4th tier compliances (https://safetyrisk.net/sin-eaters-for-safety/ ) that have no bearing at all on the management of risk.

The wonderful work of Greg Smith in Papersafe really captures the heart of the problem with the Safety psychosis with paperwork.

No matter what method you use to fill out paperwork none of it makes anyone safer. Work done doesn’t occur on paper, it occurs out on the job where real people walk and talk and tackle risk. Whatever you decided to construct in paperwork usually bears no reflection on reality or is outdated the moment it is written.

The problem isn’t the way paperwork is filled out, it’s the fixation and psychosis with paperwork itself. SWMS don’t keep people safe, risk assessments don’t keep people safe rather it’s the conversations that these things reflect that have some chance of helping workers tackle risk. The more volumes of paperwork that are generated contribute nothing to safety. What is put into paperwork most often bears no resemblance to how workers really make decisions (https://vimeo.com/471823469). Paperwork isn’t a defence in court (https://vimeo.com/162034157).

3. PAPERWORK from Human Dymensions on Vimeo.

What we learn from the sciences of human cognition, learning, psycholinguistics, neuropsychology and social psychology is that paperwork is not a solution but the foundation of the problem. Any research at all in these sciences would show that method of paperwork completion is a furphy. Paperwork is the Safety anchor that weighs down this industry under the delusions that it has some relevance to decision making. Then when something goes wrong Safety brings in all the auditors and engineers to see what went wrong in the paperwork rather than the problem with paperwork itself. This is what the Dreamworld inquiry was about (https://safetyrisk.net/an-engineering-dreamworld/ ). This is the nonsense of the Brady Inquiry (https://safetyrisk.net/brady-review-nothing-new-no-way-forward/ ). It couldn’t possibly be that the addiction to paperwork has created a toxic culture and that this is the source of why things go wrong.

The most important thing when something goes wrong in safety is not to question the foundations of safety but to shuffle the deck chairs on the Titanic. It can’t possibly be that the ideology of safety in itself is at fault. It couldn’t possibly be that paperwork is the cause of the problem. No, paperwork is the saviour of the zero cult, you just have to learn how to fill it out properly then your injury rates will come down. (as if injury rates have anything to do with safety?) How strange this cult of zero that seeks infinity in paperwork.

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Dr Rob Long

Expert in Social Psychology, Principal & Trainer at Human Dymensions

Latest posts by Dr Rob Long (see all)

Shared Ritual in the Safety Congregation? - October 24, 2021
Practice, Repetition, Habit, Routine, Ritual and Decision Making in Risk - October 23, 2021
Safety Cosmetics - October 18, 2021
The Myth of the SWMS Manifesto - October 16, 2021
Visual Thinking and Risk - October 15, 2021

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.

Rob Long says

January 8, 2021 at 2:09 PM

Keith, I wrote a reflection on Document Usability and am not surprised that the AIHS have committed to such a commercial product https://safetyrisk.net/the-template-trap-and-paper-safety/
You could drive a truck through the holes in that document as well as its dangerous assumptions about bureaucracy. The the AIHS selects it as a commercial product to support, hmmm says much about the integrity of the AIHS as a promoter of select products.
It’s a strange contradiction to address ‘safety clutter’ by then endorsing paperwork as a solution by developing a technique to fill it out.
The psychology behind the concept of useability is non-existent and ignores a great deal about reading comprehension known to educators and literacy and linguistics experts. It shows it’s true colors when it describes useability as some kind of ‘science’ and ‘useability engineering’ (ha ha ha). ‘useasbility engineering applied to documentation’. Ah yes, its much more about engineering than a psychology of education and learning. Interesting that no educators have come anywhere near this stuff and you would consult either Provan or Rae on the matter but that’s how safety supports its assumptions that it doesn’t question.
None of the work in this document has a foggy clue about reading comprehension, psychology of education or learning. As usual Safety doesn’t take a Transdiciplinary approach in anything, just more engineering and STEM-only thinking. And of course no mention of Semiotics, Poetics, Linguistics, Discourse Analysis let alone any mention of the human unconscious or how the human Mind works.
This document is what you get when you throw engineers at the Discipline of Education without a clue about the socialpsychology of education and learning. Strange, not an education degree in any of those sited in the document.
Mind you wonderful fodder for my Module on Linguistics where we tear this to shreds https://cllr.com.au/product/linguistics-flyer-unit-21/ Happy to send you a module outline, BTW none of my sources in education and the psychology of learning for my module are cited in this AIHS document nor any of the world experts on literacy, learning or linguistics.
Fancy embracing this stuff and having no cognizance of Chomsky, Ricoeur, Wittgenstein, Derrida, Merleau-Ponty, Kristeva, Halliday, Lakhoff or Fuchs, astounding. The word ‘hermeneutics’ doesn’t even appear in the document.
As usual, the AIHS anchors to mickey mouse safety in its imagination that it is making a contribution to the wicked problem of risk.

Comments

Keith says

January 8, 2021 at 12:16 PM

Thanks for the blog Rob, good info. I read the AIHS document some months back on Documentation Usability etc. Any thoughts on this document? It touched on topics that I hadn’t known prior (how a person reads a document etc), so was of some value. Not sure I would attend a masterclass for the topic but. Cheers Keith
https://www.ohsbok.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/12.3.3-Documentation-Usability.pdf

Rob Long says

January 8, 2021 at 2:09 PM

Keith, I wrote a reflection on Document Usability and am not surprised that the AIHS have committed to such a commercial product https://safetyrisk.net/the-template-trap-and-paper-safety/
You could drive a truck through the holes in that document as well as its dangerous assumptions about bureaucracy. The the AIHS selects it as a commercial product to support, hmmm says much about the integrity of the AIHS as a promoter of select products.
It’s a strange contradiction to address ‘safety clutter’ by then endorsing paperwork as a solution by developing a technique to fill it out.
The psychology behind the concept of useability is non-existent and ignores a great deal about reading comprehension known to educators and literacy and linguistics experts. It shows it’s true colors when it describes useability as some kind of ‘science’ and ‘useability engineering’ (ha ha ha). ‘useasbility engineering applied to documentation’. Ah yes, its much more about engineering than a psychology of education and learning. Interesting that no educators have come anywhere near this stuff and you would consult either Provan or Rae on the matter but that’s how safety supports its assumptions that it doesn’t question.
None of the work in this document has a foggy clue about reading comprehension, psychology of education or learning. As usual Safety doesn’t take a Transdiciplinary approach in anything, just more engineering and STEM-only thinking. And of course no mention of Semiotics, Poetics, Linguistics, Discourse Analysis let alone any mention of the human unconscious or how the human Mind works.
This document is what you get when you throw engineers at the Discipline of Education without a clue about the socialpsychology of education and learning. Strange, not an education degree in any of those sited in the document.
Mind you wonderful fodder for my Module on Linguistics where we tear this to shreds https://cllr.com.au/product/linguistics-flyer-unit-21/ Happy to send you a module outline, BTW none of my sources in education and the psychology of learning for my module are cited in this AIHS document nor any of the world experts on literacy, learning or linguistics.
Fancy embracing this stuff and having no cognizance of Chomsky, Ricoeur, Wittgenstein, Derrida, Merleau-Ponty, Kristeva, Halliday, Lakhoff or Fuchs, astounding. The word ‘hermeneutics’ doesn’t even appear in the document.
As usual, the AIHS anchors to mickey mouse safety in its imagination that it is making a contribution to the wicked problem of risk.