Legitimizing Risk
Latest article by Phil La Duke from www.philladuke.wordpress.com
More and more companies—faced with the difficult economic realities of the past years—have raised their tolerances of risk to new and dangerous heights. In this week’s post I look at how this trend developed and what, if anything can be done to reverse it. I hope you will take a moment to read it and let me know what you think.
Phil La Duke
Several days ago the United States celebrated the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the first step toward its becoming a sovereign nation. It was an event marked in the state of Michigan by the irresponsible and dangerous use of fireworks by drunken amateurs with no training. Michigan shortsightedly recently repealed a decades long ban on these types of explosives. Michigan also recently rescinded a requirement that motorcyclists wear helmets while riding. These two important laws designed to protect people are just the most recent erosion of public support for safety. I’ve written at length about the alarming shift in public opinion toward the belief that at home or at work we have gone overboard with safety, so I won’t repeat myself. Instead, I thought I would focus on how legalization (whether in the traditional legal sense or in the relaxation of work rules) endorses and legitimizes unsafe practices—if something is allowed most people assume that it’s safe. READ MORE…………
In a similar vein, if we have rules and regulations to which we turn a blind eye we are effectively sending the message that the rules don’t matter; that they don’t really protect us, they are just a means to keep order in the workplace. This further reinforces the idea that disregarding a safety regulation isn’t really putting anyone in harm’s way. When people believe an activity is is safe they are more likely to take risks while engaging in said activity. If we believe that a shortcut puts us at less risk than it in fact does, we sharply increase both the probability (if you believe that the amount of interaction increases the probability) and (perhaps) the severity of the injury (if for instance, emergency response equipment is not maintained, or if the requirements for drills are ignored).
Familiarity Breeds Contempt
As workers and companies become more comfortable with hazards the hazards cease to motivate them to take reasonable care. Why is it now necessary to ensure that industrial vehicles are checked for defects and taken out of service and repaired when it was no big deal a year ago, after all, nobody has been hurt in all that time? The fact that companies were forced to take risks (putting off maintenance, removing unsafe tools and equipment from service, letting training slide longer than one should, etc.) and suffered no meaningful consequences (governmental budget cuts have meant that, for many locations, surprise visits from regulators—and their subsequent findings—have been exceedingly rare) has left many wondering if those safety protections were necessary in the first place. READ MORE…………
Denial Isn’t Just A River In Egypt
For many companies the problem just isn’t that bad. In the mind of some leaders the fact that nothing bad has happened yet is pretty good proof that it will never happen. These organizations have been living in a collective denial (it’s difficult knowing that you are operating at heightened risk simply because you can’t afford to fix things and it’s comforting to believe that nothing is likely to happen, and if something DOES happen, it most likely won’t be serious.) Unfortunately, risks tend to grow and unless there is some form of intervention hazards will continue to build until they reach a threshold where injury is all but certain. And years of under-reporting borne from fear of job loss, corporate programs aimed at reducing “recordable” injuries instead of reduction of risk and the elimination of ALL injuries, has reinforced the idea that companies have things under control when, in fact, they may not. READ MORE…………
Reversing the Trend
For most organizations the problem of legitimizing risk did not happen over night and unfortunately it needs to be rapidly reversed. One solution is a performance audit. A performance audit is different from a compliance audit in several important ways. While a compliance audit is designed to determine the gap between what is legally required and the current state of an organization a performance audit goes far deeper. The purpose of the performance audit is, in part, to assess the organization’s tolerance for risk and to present—often in jarring terms—the areas where immediate action must be taken. Performance audits can open the eyes to hazards and unseen risks and reverse decades of incremental complacency and underestimation of hazards. Performance audits are often pricey, and many organizations balk at the cost, especially as they are just beginning to limp out of the red and into the black, but these audits remain the best and most effective way of quickly breaking the trend toward legitimizing risk. READ MORE…………
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