We’ve published a few articles about the importance of reflection on safety and risk (see the links below). If you Google “safety reflection” then you are likely to find our blog and a few sites selling retro reflective hi-viz clothing!
I certainly didn’t expect to come across another safety blog article about it but SCM SAFETY BLOG has just published this very interesting article. There is lots of interesting stuff on the SCM Blog so worth surfing there for a bit. As Max Geyer describes it: “there is a bit in this for the traditionalists and for the not so traditional”. Enjoy this extract with a link to the full article at the end:
Reflection Based Safety
It’s sort of all the rage these days to come up with a SOMETHING-Based Safety. Obviously there’s Behavior-Based Safety that’s been around for a while. But we’ve also seen others like People-Based Safety, Design-Based Safety or Management-Based Safety. All of these different focuses are well-meaning of course, although we have to say that a focus on any one aspect of an organization is a bit too reductionist, focusing on one thing, not how these things work together (some of these avoid that trap, like Relationship-Based Safety). But we think it’s time for us to jump on this bandwagon. We want to put forth our own SOMETHING-Based Safety, but what should it be?
Each of these SOMETHING-Based Safeties is responding to an area that they feel is not getting enough emphasis in the safety profession, whether it be people, behavior, management, design, relationships, etc. If we follow this line of thought, then we should develop a SOMETHING-Based Safety that focuses on something that isn’t getting enough attention.
With that in mind then, we submit for your approval Reflection-Based Safety. We chose Reflection-Based Safety because if there’s one thing that the safety profession seems to be lacking these days it’s a healthy dose of self-reflection. We often are so focused on external factors – hazards, compliance, getting people to follow the rules, getting management commitment to safety. We talk about how to influence people, how to coerce them and, sometimes, how to force them to do what we want. We spend lots of time talking about how frustrating it is to deal with people who just don’t seem to care about safety enough, whether that’s the workers or our top management. We even sometimes make fun of those people, posting pictures of people doing things that look stupid and we mock them. You just can’t fix stupid, right? We discuss how factors such as greed, laziness, peer pressure, pride and a general lack of ethics lead to all of these problems. We devise strategies to deal with these external problems.
But one thing is missing from all of this discussion – our contribution. READ MORE >>>>>>>
MORE ARTICLES ABOUT SAFETY and RISK REFLECTION:
Reflections of a ‘Doer’ Does learning more about ourselves help us to better understand and influence others? I’ve learnt that if we are going to change the way things are done in risk and safety that the focus needs to be more on ‘influencing’ than ‘controlling’. In this piece, I’d like to explore the concept of learning …… Enjoy the rest of the article >>>>>
Reflection Makes Sense Organisations, despite their apparent preoccupation with facts, numbers, objectivity, concreteness, and accountability, are in fact saturated with subjectivity, abstraction, guesses, making do, invention and arbitrariness… just like the rest of us. (Weick 1969, p. 5) These are the words of Karl Weick who helps us understand …… Enjoy the rest of the article >>>>>
Critical Safety Reflection or thinking about stuff
Critical Safety Reflection or thinking about stuff George’s Safety Reflections SEE MORE HERE By George Robotham www.ohschange.com.au This brief article was prompted by an excellent paper in the Central Alberta Well Services Corporation, Safety Newsletter, Vol2, Issue 6 by Mark Sanborn, www.marksanborn.com titled “Think like a leader and
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