• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

SafetyRisk.net

Humanising Safety and Embracing Real Risk

  • Home
    • About
      • Privacy Policy
      • Contact
  • FREE
    • Slogans
      • Researchers Reveal the Top 10 Most Effective Safety Slogans Of All Time
      • When Slogans Don’t Work
      • CLASSIC, FAMOUS and INFAMOUS SAFETY QUOTES
      • 500 OF THE BEST AND WORST WORKPLACE HEALTH and SAFETY SLOGANS 2023
      • CATCHY and FUNNY SAFETY SLOGANS FOR THE WORKPLACE
      • COVID-19 (Coronavirus, Omicron) Health and Safety Slogans and Quotes for the Workplace
      • Safety Acronyms
      • You know Where You Can Stick Your Safety Slogans
      • Sayings, Slogans, Aphorisms and the Discourse of Simple
      • Spanish Safety Slogans – Consignas de seguridad
      • Safety Slogans List
      • Road Safety Slogans 2023
      • How to write your own safety slogans
      • Why Are Safety Slogans Important
      • Safety Slogans Don’t Save Lives
      • 40 Free Safety Slogans For the Workplace
      • Safety Slogans for Work
    • FREE SAFETY eBOOKS
    • Free Hotel and Resort Risk Management Checklist
    • FREE DOWNLOADS
    • TOP 50
    • FREE RISK ASSESSMENT FORMS
    • Find a Safety Consultant
    • Free Safety Program Documents
    • Psychology Of Safety
    • Safety Ideas That Work
    • HEALTH and SAFETY MANUALS
    • FREE SAFE WORK METHOD STATEMENT RESOURCES
    • Whats New In Safety
    • FUN SAFETY STUFF
    • Health and Safety Training
    • SAFETY COURSES
    • Safety Training Needs Analysis and Matrix
    • Top 20 Safety Books
    • This Toaster Is Hot
    • Free Covid-19 Toolbox Talks
    • Download Page – Please Be Patient With Larger Files…….
    • SAFETY IMAGES, Photos, Unsafe Pictures and Funny Fails
    • How to Calculate TRIFR, LTIFR and Other Health and Safety Indicators
    • Download Safety Moments from Human Resources Secretariat
  • Social Psychology Of Risk
    • What is Psychological Health and Safety at Work?
    • Safety Psychology Terminology
    • Some Basics on Social Psychology & Risk
    • Understanding The Social Psychology of Risk – Prof Karl E. Weick
    • The Psychology of Leadership in Risk
    • Conducting a Psychology and Culture Safety Walk
    • The Psychology of Conversion – 20 Tips to get Started
    • Understanding The Social Psychology of Risk And Safety
    • Psychology and safety
    • The Psychology of Safety
    • Hot Toaster
    • TALKING RISK VIDEOS
    • WHAT IS SAFETY
    • THE HOT TOASTER
    • THE ZERO HARM DEBATE
    • SEMIOTICS
    • LEADERSHIP
  • Dr Long Posts
    • ALL POSTS
    • Learning Styles Matter
    • There is no Hierarchy of Controls
    • Scaffolding, Readiness and ZPD in Learning
    • What Can Safety Learn From Playschool?
    • Presentation Tips for Safety People
    • Dialogue Do’s and Don’ts
    • It’s Only a Symbol
    • Ten Cautions About Safety Checklists
    • Zero is Unethical
    • First Report on Zero Survey
    • There is No Objectivity, Deal With it!
  • THEMES
    • Risk Myths
    • Safety Myths
    • Safety Culture Silences
    • Safety Culture
    • Psychological Health and Safety
    • Zero Harm
    • Due Diligence
  • Free Learning
    • Introduction to SPoR – Free
    • FREE RISK and SAFETY EBOOKS
    • FREE ebook – Guidance for the beginning OHS professional
    • Free EBook – Effective Safety Management Systems
    • Free EBook – Lessons I Have Learnt
  • Psychosocial Safety
    • What is Psychosocial Safety
    • Psychological Safety
      • What is Psychological Health and Safety at Work?
      • Managing psychosocial hazards at work
      • Psychological Safety – has it become the next Maslow’s hammer?
      • What is Psychosocial Safety
      • Psychological Safety Slogans and Quotes
      • What is Psychological Safety?
      • Understanding Psychological Terminology
      • Psycho-Social and Socio-Psychological, What’s the Difference?
      • Build a Psychologically Safe Workplace by Taking Risks and Analysing Failures
      • It’s not weird – it’s a psychological safety initiative!
You are here: Home / Robert Long / The Safety of Space and Place

The Safety of Space and Place

November 13, 2021 by Dr Rob Long 2 Comments

The Safety of Space and Place

imageWe have known for some time how space and place amplifies harm (Nash, 2006, Inescapable Ecologies, A History of Environment, Disease and Knowledge). When we pay attention to the non-measurables in life and being we begin to envision safety in a completely different way to naming and controlling hazards. Indeed, the burden of a material/physical focus foisted on Safety by an engineering worldview feeds an obsession with looking for risk in the wrong place. When we learn to dump the language of brain-centrism and body-as-machine metaphors we learn a new language that envisions risk differently (https://www.humandymensions.com/product/envisioning-risk-seeing-vision-and-meaning-in-risk/ ).

Nash’s work shows how through History that humans have harmed themselves through the way they organize in space and place without question. Researchers like Nash and Bachelard (The Poetics of Space ) demonstrate how important the imagination is in understanding harm. We know that what we believe about space and place (https://safetyrisk.net/can-what-you-believe-make-you-well-or-sick/ ) and even the metaphors and language we use for illness (Sontag, 1977, Illness as a Metaphor – https://safetyrisk.net/can-what-you-believe-make-you-well-or-sick/; Radley, 1994, Making Sense of Illness, The Social Psychology of Health and Disease) shape the way we self-harm. One of the most common ways we harm ourselves is though Technique, the quest for total efficiency (Ellul, 1964, The Technological Society – https://monoskop.org/images/5/55/Ellul_Jacques_The_Technological_Society.pdf ).

When you cannot envision risk, counting injuries looks like you care about and have a passion for safety.

Envisioning is about big picture thinking. Envisioning risk is about understanding risk outside of the bounds of mono-disciplinary safety.

When we learn to jump outside of the bounds of engineering, we begin to envision risk. This is why the language of ‘ecologies’ is so important in understanding persons, culture and harm (https://safetyrisk.net/so-you-want-culture-change-2/ ). Once one learns to step outside of the confines of numerics, metrics and the nonsense of zero, a new vision of living and moving in risk emerges. When we dump the nonsense of prediction, controls, mechanics and omnipotence, we learn to embrace persons in a holistic way that humanizes risk.

A good example is in the nonsense development of ‘hot desking’ (https://safetyrisk.net/selective-safety-and-well-being/ ). Hot desking is the quest for efficiency on full show. Humans be damned, let’s economise, you know it saves money. Hot desking is Technique on full display. However, most harm in space and place is much more subtle and insidious.

Safety is a disposition of Mind in place and space, not a mechanical strategy for controlling hazards.

When your methodology (worldview) is shaped by zero, primed by zero and framed by zero, no wonder the trajectory is the harm of persons.

It’s a shame that the study of Ergonomics in safety is so narrow and that human bodies are not understood holistically (https://cllr.com.au/product/holistic-ergonomics-unit-6/ ). Traditional ergonomics simply reinforces the behaviourist assumptions of safety that understand ‘human factors’ as humans as ‘factors’ in a system, not as persons in an ecology. How strange that human factor safety is NOT about persons but about bodies as machines in a system. The machine metaphor is a disaster for persons just as the brain-as-computer metaphor is a disaster for the human Mind. The body is NOT a machine (https://aeon.co/essays/how-ecological-thinking-fills-the-gaps-in-biomedicine ).

So, what can we do to prevent harm?

  1. The beginning of understanding harm in safety is to dump the nonsense of behaviourism, engineering and scientism as a frame for understanding persons. As long as the ideology and language of zero dominates the safety space, persons will be more greatly harmed than ever.
  2. The next thing is to realise that Safety embodies a philosophy (methodology) that it never studies or discusses. And it is out of this insidious philosophy that much dehumanisation of persons emerges. Safety will never improve by putting heads in the sand and imagining that safety is some kind of objective authoritarian process.
  3. Moving away from a regulatory focus in curriculum is also critical if we are to create a safe space for persons to work.
  4. Embracing a Transdisciplinary focus is also essential for better understanding persons and how cultural space can enable well-being.

There are many things that can be done to improve the way we tackle risk but they are not to be found in traditional safety. Even the four actions above are a huge challenge for an industry consumed with compliance, paperwork and policing.

However, there is a better way that works (https://www.humandymensions.com/product/it-works-a-new-approach-to-risk-and-safety/ ), it just relies on that first move away from zero so that safety can improve (https://safetyrisk.net/moving-away-from-zero-so-that-safety-improves/ ).

  • Bio
  • Latest Posts
  • More about Rob
Dr Rob Long

Dr Rob Long

Expert in Social Psychology, Principal & Trainer at Human Dymensions
Dr Rob Long

Latest posts by Dr Rob Long (see all)

  • Psychosocial Safety, Following-Leading in Risk - February 4, 2023
  • Free Program on Due Diligence - February 4, 2023
  • Not Just Another ‘Hazard’ - February 3, 2023
  • Work-Life and Risk, Feminine Perspectives - February 3, 2023
  • How to Be Oriented Towards Psychosocial and Mental Health in Safety - February 2, 2023
Dr Rob Long
PhD., MEd., MOH., BEd., BTh., Dip T., Dip Min., Cert IV TAA, MRMIA Rob is the founder of Human Dymensions and has extensive experience, qualifications and expertise across a range of sectors including government, education, corporate, industry and community sectors over 30 years. Rob has worked at all levels of the education and training sector including serving on various post graduate executive, post graduate supervision, post graduate course design and implementation programs.

Please share our posts

  • Click to print (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)

Related

Filed Under: Robert Long Tagged With: Envisioning Risk, space and place

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Brent Charlton says

    November 15, 2021 at 11:06 PM

    I had never heard the term “hot desking” before but worked a short time in a Japanese owned company that used the open office concept. Desks face to face and side to side in groups of four. The plant manager and I faced each other. HR was directly behind me, quality to my left. And there were at least another dozen in the room beyond that. Add in two different languages being spoken and by the end of each day my head was about to explode. Forget concentrating in that environment – it was impossible. I left after about 6 months when I couldn’t take it anymore.

    Reply
    • Rob Long says

      November 16, 2021 at 7:38 AM

      Yes Brent, whilst safety runs about like a chook chasing minor LTIs, paper cuts and minor near misses, there is no conversation about how we harm people by the very way we organise. This seems to be most amplified in zero harm organisations.

      Reply

Do you have any thoughts? Please share them below Cancel reply

Primary Sidebar

Search and Discover More on this Site

Never miss a post - Subscribe via Email

Enter your email address and join other discerning risk and safety people who receive notifications of new posts by email

Join 7,499 other subscribers

RECOMMENDED READING

viral post – iso 45003 and what it cannot do

Introduction to SPOR – FREE!!

Psychosocial Safety and Mental Health Series

Psychosocial Safety, Following-Leading in Risk

Not Just Another ‘Hazard’

Psychosocial Safety, Is it possible to make it culturally normal?

How to Be Oriented Towards Psychosocial and Mental Health in Safety

ISO 45003 and What it Cannot Do

The KISS of Death in Safety

Behavioural Safety is NOT a Foundation for Tackling Psychosocial and Mental Health

The Worst Approach to Psychosocial Problems is an Attitude of ‘Fixing’

The Language of ‘Hazards’ and Psychosocial, Mental Health

Welcome to the Nightmare, Safety Creates its Own Minefield (as usual)

More Posts from this Category

NEW! Free Download

Please take our 2 minute zero survey

Recent Comments

  • Psychosocial Security, Following-Main in Threat - Personal Safety News on Psychosocial Safety, Following-Leading in Risk
  • Rob Long on Psychosocial Safety, Is it possible to make it culturally normal?
  • simon p cassin on Psychosocial Safety, Is it possible to make it culturally normal?
  • simon p cassin on Psychosocial Safety, Is it possible to make it culturally normal?
  • Rob long on How to Be Oriented Towards Psychosocial and Mental Health in Safety
  • Rob Long on Psychosocial Safety, Is it possible to make it culturally normal?
  • Rob Long on Psychosocial Safety, Is it possible to make it culturally normal?
  • Matt Thorne on Psychosocial Safety, Is it possible to make it culturally normal?
  • simon p cassin on Psychosocial Safety, Is it possible to make it culturally normal?
  • Hurak Learning on How to Be Oriented Towards Psychosocial and Mental Health in Safety
  • Rob Long on An Advanced Understanding of Culture – A Video
  • Paul Gentles on An Advanced Understanding of Culture – A Video
  • Brent Charlton on The KISS of Death in Safety
  • Rob Long on The KISS of Death in Safety
  • Brian Edwin Darlington on The KISS of Death in Safety
  • Brian on The Language of ‘Hazards’ and Psychosocial, Mental Health
  • Jaise on The Language of ‘Hazards’ and Psychosocial, Mental Health
  • Rob Long on Posture Myths and Holistic Ergonomics
  • Linda McKendry on Posture Myths and Holistic Ergonomics
  • Rob long on Welcome to the Nightmare, Safety Creates its Own Minefield (as usual)

FREE eBOOK DOWNLOADS

Footer

VIRAL POST – The Risk Matrix Myth

Top Posts & Pages. Sad that most are so dumb but this is what safety luves

  • 500 OF THE BEST AND WORST WORKPLACE HEALTH and SAFETY SLOGANS 2023
  • Road Safety Slogans 2023
  • Free Safety Moments and Toolbox Talk Examples, Tips and Resources
  • Proving Safety
  • CATCHY and FUNNY SAFETY SLOGANS FOR THE WORKPLACE
  • NATIONAL SAFETY DAY/WEEK IN INDIA 2023
  • Psychosocial Safety, Is it possible to make it culturally normal?
  • 15 Safety Precautions When Working With Electricity
  • Download Safety Moments from Human Resources Secretariat
  • Safety Acronyms

Recent Posts

  • Psychosocial Safety, Following-Leading in Risk
  • Free Program on Due Diligence
  • Not Just Another ‘Hazard’
  • Work-Life and Risk, Feminine Perspectives
  • Psychosocial Safety, Is it possible to make it culturally normal?
  • How to Be Oriented Towards Psychosocial and Mental Health in Safety
  • Free Download – Real Risk – New Book by Dr Robert Long
  • Proving Safety
  • ISO 45003 and What it Cannot Do
  • Harming People in the Name of Good
  • An Advanced Understanding of Culture – A Video
  • Risk and Safety Maturity
  • The KISS of Death in Safety
  • SPoR, Metanoia and a Podcast on Change with Nippin Anand
  • Behavioural Safety is NOT a Foundation for Tackling Psychosocial and Mental Health
  • The Worst Approach to Psychosocial Problems is an Attitude of ‘Fixing’
  • SPoR Comes to Vienna June 2023
  • The Language of ‘Hazards’ and Psychosocial, Mental Health
  • Welcome to the Nightmare, Safety Creates its Own Minefield (as usual)
  • The Visionary Imagination – Louisa Lawson
  • Heaven ‘n Hell and the Safety Religion
  • Confirmity in Conformity
  • Numerology and Psychic Numbing
  • Thinking of Mortality
  • Safety is the Wrong Anchor
  • Foresight Blindness, Hindsight Bias and Risk
  • Getting the Balance Right in Tackling Risk
  • What is SPoR?
  • How Bias Inhibits Learning in Safety
  • Afraid to Let Go of What Doesn’t Work in Safety
  • When You Don’t Know What to do in Safety, Have Another Blitz!!!
  • Gloves and Glasses Compliance
  • A Case of Desensitisation – What Would You Do?
  • How to Leave the Safety Industry
  • The Mythic Symbology of Safety
  • Dark Waters, The True Story of DuPont and Zero
  • 400,000 Free Downloads
  • Am I stupid? I didn’t think of that…
  • Don’t Look Now Safety, Your Metaphor is Showing
  • Ratio Delusions and Heinrich’s Hoax
  • To Err is Human, You Better Believe It
  • Culture as a Wicked Problem, for Safety
  • Safety Leadership Training
  • Cultural Orientation in Risk
  • The Stanford Experiment and The Social Psychology of Risk
  • Objectivity, Audits and Attribution When Calculating Risk
  • Records of safety activities: evidence of safety or non-compliance?
  • Zero, The Seeking of Infinity
  • Safety Leadership Essentials
  • What Can Indiana Jones Tell Us About Culture

VIRAL POST!!! HOW TO QUIT THE SAFETY INDUSTRY

FEATURED POSTS

SEEK Investigations Workshop

Building resilience trumps the prevention of harm

The Challenge of Social Sensemaking in Risk

Risk Boldly

Perth and London SPoR Workshops

Embracing Diversity & Critical Thinking to Help us ‘Create’?

Disrupting the Methodology in Safety?

Social Psychology of Risk – Body of Knowledge

Courage to Challenge the Great TRIFR and LTIFR Delusion

The Fear of Freedom in Safety

Safety for Luddites

Risk Culture and Cultural Risk

ACTOR + ACTION + TIME = EVENT

Free Online Introduction to the Social Psychology of Risk

Hoodwinked by Heinrich

Managing Risk Rather Than Striving for Absolute Safety

Centre for Leadership and Learning in Risk (CLLR)–Study Calendar

Kinesthetic Safety

Tattoos, Taboos and The Risk of Permanence

A Masters Degree in ‘Tick and Flick’

Concept Mapping Risk iCue

A Culture of Care (and sackings…)

A Question of Ethics

Right Then Children, Sit Up Straight and Take Some Safety

People Skills Are Not Soft Skills

The New Safety Saviour – Algorithms

Behaviourist Neuroscience as Safety

Semiotics and the Unconscious Messages We Send

SPoR Quarterly Newsletter September 2021

10 Reasons Why Safety Can Never Make You Happy

Risk and Safety Starts with Being?

The Banned Objects Index – A New Development in Safety Culture

Challenges and Opportunities for Learning in a Crisis

Nothing is Learned Through Brutalism

Look With Your Heart and Not With Your Eyes

Adverse Events: Eliminate or Anticipate?

A Scaffolder’s Journey in SPoR – A Podcast

7 Incredible Ways To Diagnose Risk More Effectively

Safetie

‘False Consciousness’ and Perception in Risk and Safety

More Posts from this Category

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Enter your email address and join other discerning risk and safety people who receive notifications of new posts by email

Join 7,499 other subscribers

How we pay for the high cost of running of this site – try it for free on your site

WHAT IS PSYCHOLOGICAL SAFETY?

What is Psychological Safety at Work?


WHAT IS PSYCHOSOCIAL SAFETY