The Safety Dunce
The profession of teaching learned over 100 years ago that humiliation, shaming and victimising doesn’t work. Indeed, such strategies are not just ineffective but drive the opposite. Understanding ethics in teaching was essential for claiming the status of ‘professional’.
Not so Safety.
I was shown this photo yesterday (See Figure 1. I Forgot My PPE) and nothing about it surprises me, from an industry that has no idea about professional ethics.
Figure 1. I Forgot My PPE
Only Safety could think that this process of humiliation serves any purpose.
The foundation for any professional ethic is: respect for persons, understanding motivation and managing power. If you want to understand how not to be professional, read the AIHS BoK Chapter on non-Ethics. All of what is critical to ethics is NOT discussed in this chapter!
One of the things that is unfortunate about this photo, is that it elevates PPE as some kind of critical element of safety. The opposite is the case.
Why is it that Safety runs around policing PPE when it is the lowest form of protection?
Why is it that safety thinks shaming a person motivates anyone? We learned 50 years ago that all of the mechanisms of behaviourism don’t work.
Not so Safety!
Just imagine if this was done to your child in school today? Sitting a child in the corner of the room with a dunce’s hat, was last used in schools in the 1920s. I could imagine any safety advisor being first up to the school to complain about shaming and humiliating their child! Yet somehow an image such as this gets praise online because Safety thinks its professional!
The real dunce in all of this is Safety.
Poor olde Safety, still yet to learn that ethics is the foundation of professionalism.
Poore olde Safety, still shouting the word ‘professional’ from the rooftops without an ethic to support it.
Un-professional Safety, still in the dark ages without much clue of what works in safety.
Prof. Robert Long
Latest posts by Prof. Robert Long (see all)
- Zero in 100 Days, I’m 1% Safer - September 13, 2026
- Affordances and Risk - September 13, 2026
- Embouchure, Affordance and Learning in Risk - September 8, 2026
- Following-Leading in Risk, Supplement. Free Download - September 7, 2026
- Safety Culture and the Culture of Safety - September 6, 2026