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

Safety Risk .net

Humanising Safety and Embracing Real Risk

  • Home
    • About
      • Privacy Policy
      • Contact
  • FREE RESOURCES
    • FREE SAFETY eBOOKS
    • 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
  • PSYCHOLOGY OF SAFETY & RISK
    • 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
  • Covid-19
    • COVID-19 (Coronavirus, Omicron) Health and Safety Slogans and Quotes for the Workplace
    • Covid-19 Returning to Work Inductions, Transitioning, Safety Start Up and Re Entry Plans
    • Covid-19 Work from Home Safety Checklists and Risk Assessments
    • The Hierarchy of Control and Covid-19
    • Why Safety Loves Covid-19
    • Covid-19, Cricket and Lessons in Safety
    • The Covid-19 Lesson
    • Safety has this Covid-19 thing sorted
    • The Heart of Wisdom at Covid Time
    • How’s the Hot Desking Going Covid?
    • The Semiotics of COVID-19 and the Social Amplification of Risk
    • Working From Home Health and Safety Tips – Covid-19
    • Covid-19 and the Hierarchy of Control
  • Dr Rob Long 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!
  • Quotes & Slogans
    • Researchers Reveal the Top 10 Most Effective Safety Slogans Of All Time
    • When Slogans Don’t Work
    • 77 OF THE MOST CLASSIC, FAMOUS and INFAMOUS SAFETY QUOTES
    • 500 BEST and WORST WORKPLACE HEALTH and SAFETY SLOGANS 2021
    • 167 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
    • 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
You are here: Home / Covid-19 / Zero Vision Creates Mindless Gobbledygook

Zero Vision Creates Mindless Gobbledygook

January 20, 2021 by Dr Rob Long 8 Comments

Zero Vision Creates Mindless Gobbledygook

image When you commit yourself to a nonsense unachievable goal, idiotic language and binary targets, you have no choice but to speak endless gobbledygook. This is the only conclusion one can come to when reading the latest nonsense from IOSH magazine

Whenever you frame your existence by a number (https://safetyrisk.net/its-always-a-number/) and then try to apply STEM thinking to fallible humans, you will always end up speaking gobbledygook.

So, let’s just have a brief look at what the editor of IOSH writes. Starting with a discussion on Covid-19 she is already on a hiding to nothing. Oh yes, my goal for Covid is zero, how’s that going for you?

Then out comes the word ‘hope’. There can never be hope in seeking infinity for fallible humans. Seeking zero for fallible humans is a lesson in depression, anxiety and non-achievement. Zero can never be a reality in this world, it runs against all we know about the randomness of the world and fallible humans. So, did Zero predict the pandemic? Two million dead so far, yep that sounds like zero to me. When the stats are already at 2 million fatalities, zero sounds like a nonsense target especially when no vaccines are 100% effective. You see, if you decided to talk in absolutes to fallible people the by-product is always an outcome of dumb.

By the time we get to paragraph 3 of this short editorial piece we already know that when you set your global mantra by a dumb goal, you can’t go back. This is because the binary logic of the whole zero ideology doesn’t know what to do with numbers and injuries. When you measure the presence of safety by the absence of injuries, you are on sinking ship. Even so, in this paragraph the editor admits that from the 1980s to 2021 zero has not been achieved. Hmmm, in any body’s book that’s 41 years of failure by any metric. And if your ideology is framed by metrics and numerics, you will always get a by-product of brutalism.

Then paragraph 4 gets even better. In comes the word ‘motivation’! Hmmm, how does 41 years of not achieving an ideological goal develop motivation? We learn the fundamentals of SMART goals as 101 in any management course, and we know there is no motivation unless the goal is achievable. Well, there’s 41 years of not meeting a goal but press on, well get there by 3035.

Zero vision is not a vision, it’s a nonsense ideology a dumb industry got caught in because it doesn’t know what to do. When you set your ideology by numerics, injury rates, binary opposition and a closed epistemology, your only outcome is dumb.

Ah yes, ‘it’s a long road ahead’ but never question the assumptions of a failed ideology. As the editor suggests and knows this ideology of zero is ‘unrealistic’ and ‘unattainable’. Wow, how motivating is that. There’s a sure way to get everyone ‘positive’ about safety. That’s right, out comes the dumb logic again, it’s about having a target and navigating a pathway towards it. Ah my goal for life is zero death (https://safetyrisk.net/my-target-goal-is-zero-death/ ), zero suffering and zero injury, how’s that goal going?

What a dumb industry this is, setting unattainable goals and then telling people to be positive and motivated. Of course, the cover of the magazine says it all. Poor olde Safety always fixated on numbers, always bogged down in the quantitative quagmire of quanta (https://safetyrisk.net/the-quantitative-and-qualitative-divide-in-safety/ ) Always anxious because it set a dumb goal that cannot be achieved (https://safetyrisk.net/measurement-anxiety-in-safety/). You can bet on one thing, if zero is in the title of a safety book, there is no vision for anything humanizing.

Well, don’t let reality get in the way of an idiotic non-vision. Just keep batting on hoping that you will hit infinity one day. But let’s talk about that reality. Here are the current results of the zero survey (https://safetyrisk.net/take-the-zero-survey/) with over 1000 participants results show:

· 85% of the industry doesn’t believe in the nonsense of zero.

· 95% of safety people believe humans are fallible

· 72% believe accidents are not preventable

· 92% believe zero is unachievable

· 70% believe zero leads to bullying and brutalism in the workplace

· 92% believe zero creates dishonesty

· 94% believe the industry would be better off without zero ideology

So we can see, all this constant ideology of zero will do to the industry will divide it, fragment it and create an industry of normalized schizophrenia. According to me that would be a mental health injury.

Then if you want to get beyond the editorial into the IOSH magazine itself you can read more gobbledygook and sheer delusion in ‘Striving for Perfection’. Ah, good olde Safety off the scale on the DSMV 5 on seeking perfection as the first sign of a mental health disorder (https://psychotherapy.psychiatryonline.org/doi/full/10.1176/appi.psychotherapy.2015.69.3.317 ). Here is an industry with no vision virtually creating mental harm by its own ideology. Count those sometime and find a zero.

As you read this gobbledygook in the article you see in bold enlarged print ‘A lot of fatal accidents we see are underpinned by poor decision-making’. There you go, the pathway to zero is the pathway to blaming. Not bad for an industry that has no idea about human judgment and decision-making with no coverage of the subject in the AIHS BoK or any safety curriculum globally.

Read further in the article and it just gets worse in discussion of leading indicators (ah we must have measurables) for zero. Then in bold in the article is a counting box stating all the times in the UK zero was not achieved.

How could anyone be inspired or motivated by this ideological nonsense?

The end of the article is pure nonsense:

Alan Stevens, head of strategic engagement at IOSH, says that what is needed is a ‘Kaizen continuous improvement mindset’. Zero fatalities, and even zero accidents, is already happening at site level in a time-bound sense, he notes. ‘You go into a factory and they are proud of having no accidents for a certain time. It’s about how we extend that. It’s a bit like a marriage – you have to keep working at it. It’s not a line you cross and win the race.’

How embarrassing, who sets a goal in their marriage for zero mistakes?

What a useless metaphor. Who would ever talk about their marriage in perfectionist terms? Isn’t the divorce rate about 50%?

What a great way to close an article on zero comparing injury rates to a marriage. I’m sure my wife would be delighted if I bragged about achieving zero for 3 seconds in a 47 year time period.

The real challenge for safety is not counting silly numbers but like a real marriage understanding that higher order goals (https://safetyrisk.net/goals-and-vision-in-safety/) are critical. We know the key to an effective marriage is not numbers, not mistakes, not error, not prevention but: effective communication, understanding, trust, helping, care, listening and forgiveness.

These are all the higher goals that the safety industry (fixed on a numbers) has no idea about and will never come close to understanding as long as its sets it sights by the ideology of zero vision.

  • 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)

  • Culture Silences in Safety – Holism - May 23, 2022
  • Culture Silences in Safety The Collective Unconscious - May 21, 2022
  • Culture Silences in Safety Artefacts - May 20, 2022
  • Culture Silences in Safety Symbolism - May 19, 2022
  • Culture Silences in Safety Mythology - May 16, 2022
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 this to a friend (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)

Related

Filed Under: Covid-19, Robert Long, Zero Harm Tagged With: IOSH, zero vision

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Rob Long says

    January 22, 2021 at 6:49 AM

    Wynand, understand, maybe I should have qualified the statement by saying the appreciation of zero in the title. My book title of course is satirical. Interestingly published ages ago and still the only book on the globe that critiques the problem.

    Reply
  2. Wynand says

    January 21, 2021 at 7:13 PM

    Rob, a complete tongue-in-the-cheek comment – you say “You can bet on one thing, if zero is in the title of a safety book, there is no vision for anything humanizing.” I remember reading a book “For the love of Zero” from a certain Dr Robert Long…

    Reply
  3. Rob Long says

    January 21, 2021 at 3:49 PM

    This 1% more crap is just more numerics, more numbers, more percentages all masked in behaviourist nonsense and further damages any message about safety. It just shows how much the zero cult believes its own lies. You wouldn’t but a plastic balloon from this mob, it would blow up.

    Reply
  4. Rob Long says

    January 21, 2021 at 3:45 PM

    Audrey, nothing from this rubbish magazine is a surprise. When you think safety is about numerics and bow to the cult of zero, whatever follows will be dumb and, this edition of IOSH does dumb in spades. Next blog to go up is about the arrogance of Safety to tell the Education profession that safety should be in the curriculum. Safety knows nothing about education, the foundation of all learning is the denial of zero. Anyone who believes in zero must deny learning because there can be no learning without risk and no zero unless all learning stops.
    This IOSH magazine proves that the industry of safety is not a profession.

    Reply
  5. Bernard Corden says

    January 21, 2021 at 8:40 AM

    But wait there is more:

    ihttp://visionzero.global/accredited-vision-zero-trainer

    Furthermore, the recent One Percent Safer Foundation is a furtive attempt to masquerade the brutality under a rubric of righteousness.

    https://onepercentsafer.com/product/one-percent-safer/

    Reply
  6. Audrey Silver says

    January 21, 2021 at 6:35 AM

    I have to admit my heart sank when I saw that IOSH – my own ‘club’ was promoting this ‘Vision zero’ nonsense.
    Although not the point of your critique, this issue is also one of the worst they have ever produced – and I had them all from 1990 to now. Content is scattergun, and the presentation is distracting, with items jostling for attention, making it difficult to concentrate and properly read. In the style of a casual magazine you might flick through in a waiting room. Sad . . .

    Reply
  7. Rob Long says

    January 21, 2021 at 6:31 AM

    Andrew, can you imagine a teacher writing an article seeking perfection? I’d hate to be a child in their class. or a social worker, nurse, dentist or doctor? What a crazy disjointed industry in its own delusional bubble that has no idea of being professional.
    The language of this article could never be transferred to any sphere where real professionals live with reality on a daily basis and don’t punish humans for being fallible. Where else could you find a magazine that parades such nonsense as seeking perfection except in this intellectual backwater, Safety.

    Reply
  8. Andrew Floyd says

    January 20, 2021 at 9:53 PM

    The irony and tragedy is that, the one goal that they seem to be good at is effective communications to a gullible, non critical thinking audience, obsessed by short cuts and machines that go “Bing”

    Andrew

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

Search and Discover More on this Site

Visit Count – Started Jan 2015

  • 24,022,423 Visitors

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 7,426 other subscribers

NEW! Free Download

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

Please take our 2 minute zero survey

Recent Comments

  • Ndilimeke Shiwayu on How to Give an Unforgettable Safety Presentation
  • Mark Wayne Arboso on 500 BEST and WORST WORKPLACE HEALTH and SAFETY SLOGANS 2021
  • Roel on Free Workplace Health and Safety Downloads
  • Rob Long on Safety Silences – Video Series
  • BRENT R CHARLTON on Safety Silences – Video Series
  • Rob Long on Sleep Dysfunction, Dreaming and Safety
  • Rob Long on Working Out What Makes Sense in Safety
  • simon cassin on Working Out What Makes Sense in Safety
  • Rob Long on The Safety Trifecta and Nothing Changes
  • Aneta Parker on The Safety Trifecta and Nothing Changes

FREE eBOOK DOWNLOADS

Recent Posts

  • Culture Silences in Safety – Holism
  • Culture Silences in Safety The Collective Unconscious
  • Culture Silences in Safety Artefacts
  • Culture Silences in Safety Symbolism
  • Culture Silences in Safety Mythology
  • The Safety Trifecta and Nothing Changes
  • Sleep Dysfunction, Dreaming and Safety
  • Working Out What Makes Sense in Safety
  • How to Tackle Risk You Can’t See
  • Study Reveals an Unexpected Side Effect of Traffic Safety Messages

What is Psychological Safety at Work?

Footer

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 7,426 other subscribers

AUTHORS

  • Alan Quilley
    • Heinrich–Industrial Accident Prevention
    • The Problem With ZERO Goals and Results
  • Bernard Corden
    • After the goldrush
    • The Internationale
  • Bill Sims
    • Employee Engagement: Chocolate, Vanilla, or Strawberry?
    • Injury Hiding-How do you stop it?
  • Craig Clancy
    • Task Based vs Activity Based Safe Work Method Statements
    • Safety And Tender Submissions
  • Daniel Kirk
    • It’s easy being wise after the event.
    • A Positive Safety Story
  • Dave Whitefield
    • Safety is about…
    • Safety and Compliance
  • Dennis Millard
    • Are You Risk Intelligent?
    • Honey they get me! They get me at work!
  • Drewie
    • Downturn Doin’ Your Head In? Let’s Chat….
    • How was your break?
  • Gabrielle Carlton
    • All Care and No Care!
    • You Are Not Alone!
  • George Robotham
    • How to Give an Unforgettable Safety Presentation
    • How To Write a Safety Report
  • Goran Prvulovic
    • Safety Manager – an Ultimate Scapegoat
    • HSE Performance – Back to Basics
  • James Ellis
    • Psychological Core Stability for Wellbeing in Workers Comp
    • In search of plan B in workers’ recovery
  • James Parkinson
    • To laugh or not to laugh
    • People and Safety
  • John Toomey
    • In it for The Long Haul – Making the most of the FIFO Lifestyle
    • Who is Responsible for This?
  • Karl Cameron
    • Abby Normal Safety
    • The Right Thing
  • Ken Roberts
    • Safety Legislation Is Our Biggest Accident?
    • HSE Trip Down Memory Lane
  • Mark Perrett
    • Psychology of Persuasion: Top 5 influencing skills for getting what you want
  • Mark Taylor
    • Build a Psychologically Safe Workplace by Taking Risks and Analysing Failures
    • Enculturing Safety
  • Max Geyer
    • WHS Legislation is NOT about Safety it’s about Culture
    • Due Diligence Is Not Just Ticking Boxes!
  • Matt Thorne
    • Safety Culture–Hudson’s Model
    • Culture – Edgar Schein
  • Peter Ribbe
    • Is there “Common Sense” in safety?
    • Who wants to be a safety professional?
  • Phil LaDuke
    • Professional Conferences Are A Sleazy Con
    • Hey Idiots, You’re Worried About the Wrong Things
  • Admin
    • Study Reveals an Unexpected Side Effect of Traffic Safety Messages
    • Humanising Leadership in Risk, Shifting the Focus from Objects to Persons
  • Dr Rob Long
    • Culture Silences in Safety – Holism
    • Culture Silences in Safety The Collective Unconscious
  • Rob Sams
    • The Learning (and unlearning) that Revealed my Vocation
    • I’m just not that into safety anymore
  • Barry Spud
    • Things To Consider When Developing And Designing Your Company SWMS
    • Bad Safety Photos
  • Sheri Suckling
    • How Can I Get the Boss to Listen?
  • Simon Cassin
    • Safety values, ideas, behaviours and clothes
  • Safety Nerd
    • The Block isn’t portraying safety as it should be
    • Toolbox Talk Show–PPE
  • Wynand Serfontein
    • Why The Problem With Learning Is Unlearning
    • I DON’T KNOW
  • Zoe Koskinas
    • Why is fallibility so challenging in the workplace?

Most commented on

Forecasting Safety

The Banned Objects Index – A New Development in Safety Culture

The Unconscious and the Soap Dispenser

Dumbs for Safety

The Real Barriers to Safety

Safety as Faith Healing

Who Said We Don’t Need Systems?

Why Safety Controls Don’t Always Work

How to use signs, symbols and text effectively in communicating about risk

Safety Should NOT Be About Safety

FEATURED POSTS

Developing Our Inner Introversion

Data Cannot Drive Vision

Right Then Children, Sit Up Straight and Take Some Safety

SEEK is not a Method

Six Tips to Improve Your Safety Conversations

Desensitization, Statistics and the Psychic Numbing of Numerics

The Domino Delusion in Safety

SPoR Introductory Workshop Series April 2020

In Honour of George Robotham and Geoff McDonald

Its All In The Sign

Humanising Workplace Health and Safety Management

The Binary Barnacle

Vision Can’t Come from Safety Compliance

Safety Justifies Anything and Everything

Emotions, Bias and Heuristics in Risk

Four Indicators of Toxic Safety Culture

The Lexicon of Safety Gibberish

No Soft Skills in Safety

Safety – Just a Few Bad Apples

New Year Safety Trade-Offs and By-Products

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 7,426 other subscribers

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

 

How To Make Your Own Hand Sanitizer

 

 

How to Make your own Covid-19 Face Mask

 

Covid-19 Returning To Work Safety, Transitioning, Start Up And Re Entry Plans

 

How’s the Hot Desking Going Covid?

imageOne of the benefits of the Covid-19 epidemic is a total rethink about how we live and work (https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-03-28/coronavirus-could-reshape-how-australians-work-forever/12097124 ).

Expertise by Regurgitation and Re-Badging

One of the fascinating things about the Coronavirus pandemic is watching Safety morph into epidemiology expertise. I would like a dollar for every flyer, presentation, podcast, powerpoint, checklist template, toolbox talk and poster set that had jumped into my inbox… Read the rest

The Stress of Stasis

One of the challenging things about the Coronavirus crisis is stasis. For those without work and confined to home, for those in self-isolation, it’s like life is frozen in time. ‘Stay at home’ is the mantra. The trouble is, in… Read the rest

loading Cancel
Post was not sent - check your email addresses!
Email check failed, please try again
Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.