Many organisations and people implement SPoR Methodology and Methods (https://www.humandymensions.com/product/spor-and-semiotics/) across the globe. SPoR is not about slogans or ideas. SPoR delivers practical, doable, positive and demonstrable safety culture change.
But if you are looking for measurable data, then you are looking in the wrong place. The idea that injury data is a measure of safety is nonsense. So many other higher-order goals (https://safetyrisk.net/goal-setting-in-safety-is-easy/) are far more important for culture change.
If your company is busy counting lower-order measurable goals, it will never realise culture change. When your definition of culture is ‘what we do around here’ then clearly any organisations using that definition has no idea about culture.
This doesn’t mean the effectiveness of SPoR cannot be demonstrated after-all, no one can give any measures of safety culture change that is not qualitative. Nothing in culture can be measured quantitatively indeed, culture cannot be measured. Any effort to do so, is founded on some erroneous idea of what culture is. How can you measure the stories of people’s experiences? How can you improve safety culture when you don’t know what it is (https://safetyrisk.net/when-you-dont-know-what-culture-is-how-can-you-improve-it/) or worse still tell people not to talk about it (Busch).
The idea that we should jettison the idea of safety culture is reserved for the clowns who don’t know what culture is (https://safetyrisk.net/when-safety-is-a-circus/). The reason why so many in safety are confused about culture is because most of the noise about culture in safety is made by voices with no expertise in culture.
Similarly, seeking expertise in ethics and linguistics in safety is a recipe for deepening ignorance. Only Safety parades its ignorance in linguistics asking everyone to listen to how dumb they are (https://safetyrisk.net/linguistic-non-intelligence-with-safety-non-experts/).
In this video below (https://vimeo.com/1055470757) you will hear of examples and stories about how SPoR has changed a global company that implements SPoR methods. Mondi has been on the SPoR journey for 6 years but other organisations for up to 15 years. SPoR methods can be implemented in small local settings or large global settings. And when it is implemented, safety culture improves (https://www.humandymensions.com/product/it-works-a-new-approach-to-risk-and-safety-book-for-free-download/).
However, SPoR methodology and methods are not ‘easy’. You can’t just pull some checklist off the shelf and implement SPoR. SPoR requires hard work, reframing your approach to risk and, a major shift in disposition towards persons.
If you want to learn about SPoR you can always sign up for one of our free modules or, download one of our free books. There’s always email, and we are easy to find. Just send an email (admin@spor.com.au) and someone with expertise in SPoR near you will contact you and explain how SPoR works.
If you live in the USA you can learn about SPoR and its methods in May at the SPoR Conference in Huston Texas (https://safetyrisk.net/social-psychology-of-risk-comes-to-the-usa/).
You can register here: https://linktr.ee/SPoR.USA.may2025
For more information and Group Discounts and Early Bird Discount please mail Matt Thorne; matthew@riskdiversity.com.au
Dr Rob Long
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