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I am a Spreadsheet King

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I am a Spreadsheet King I have had numerous conversations with safety people this week who lament the amount of time they have to spend doing spreadsheets reporting on everything from injury rates, TRIFR, near miss etc. One a GM of a tier 1 organisation tells me he hasn’t had time to walk the floor or walk on site and talk to anyone because of the demand for dozens of spreadsheets per week. What i … [Continue reading...] about I am a Spreadsheet King

Understanding Safety as an Archetype

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Understanding Safety as an Archetype We all accept the idea of archetypes in our language and speech everyday. We often talk about how Love won through and how the Market behaves. We talk about the condition of the Economy and how ‘Hope springs eternal’ (Pope 1734). We talk about what Society does and we personify Evil and Good. This language we use is metaphoric and poetic and useful for und … [Continue reading...] about Understanding Safety as an Archetype

No Hope for Safety

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No Hope for Safety One of the fascinating things about culture in safety is an extraordinary satisfaction with a lack of definition and a phenomenal acceptance of assumptions about critical issues. For example, you won’t find discussion anywhere in safety about the nature of Hope, nor the nature of Faith for that matter. This is despite the fact that Faith and Hope are at the very core of u … [Continue reading...] about No Hope for Safety

The Mystery and Paradox of Being an Individual in a Social World

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The Mystery and Paradox of Being an Individual in a Social World I had the privilege today to meet up with a friend, one who I've known for a while, yet up until today we’d not had the opportunity to meet in person, so we both made the time and effort to catch up. We shared in a wholesome conversation, one where we wrestled with the tension and paradoxical challenges that we all experience in a l … [Continue reading...] about The Mystery and Paradox of Being an Individual in a Social World

The Mythic Symbology of Safety

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The Mythic Symbology of Safety One of the strange contradictions in the world of safety is between the positivist materialist paradigm that dominates the WHS curriculum/texts and the mythic symbology that dominates safety discourse about the activity of enacting safe-work. How strange that one should use language and images associated with the mythology of Greek heroes in understanding the task … [Continue reading...] about The Mythic Symbology of Safety

If You Want to Save Lives Be a Lifeguard

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If You Want to Save Lives Be a Lifeguard by Phil La Duke. First published on his blog HERE I’ve worked in safety to one extent or another for 30 years.  In fact, This June will mark my thirtieth year in a profession that isn’t all that much older than me.  And in that time I’ve met all kinds of safety professionals, from the useless goofballs that the organization felt obligated to keep (the plan … [Continue reading...] about If You Want to Save Lives Be a Lifeguard

Mapping Social Influence Strategies

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Mapping Social Influence Strategies People who train in STEM-only industries like those in risk, safety and security tend to be naïve and mis-educated about the nature of social influence. A search through any of the texts in risk and safety curriculum on the marked indicate strong influences of STEM-only behaviourist thinking. In the risk and safety industries the curriculum is primarily focused … [Continue reading...] about Mapping Social Influence Strategies

Anchoring Safety to Objects

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Anchoring Safety to Objects Anchoring refers to a human bias that ‘holds’ to a view or position based upon how it was introduced and ‘sunk-cost’ associated with commitment to that position. Anchoring acts as a ‘fast and efficient’ heuristic that short cuts any need for challenge, questioning and debate and so empowers compliance. You can read more about the psychology of anchoring here: Psychologi … [Continue reading...] about Anchoring Safety to Objects

Safety Surveying What You Already Know

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Safety Surveying What You Already Know I received a post this week from someone who had conducted the typical orthodox safety survey. There are many such surveys on the market, all infused with STEM-only assumptions about materialist-rationalist safety. As I looked through the survey results and analysis there was nothing stated or measured that organisations don’t already know. The whole survey c … [Continue reading...] about Safety Surveying What You Already Know

I Don’t Serve Systems

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I Don’t Serve Systems It’s a strange experience to read a science-managerial text on compliance. It’s strange because of the absence of any reference to human interaction or social psychological influences on behavior and human decision making. This is the case with Singh and Bussen’s book ‘Compliance Management, A How-to Guide for Executives, Lawyers and Other Compliance Professionals’. Amazing h … [Continue reading...] about I Don’t Serve Systems

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