Forget about ghosts, witches or zombies. Some real-life monsters can lurk around in a company’s closet and slowly suck the life out of your safety culture. Keep your eye out for these menaces.
Systematic Desensitization
This happens when people hear a message over and over again. Over time, they become immune to the message.
Similarly, if people are constantly exposed to a dangerous activity, they become less vigilant and begin to ignore the danger.
Normalized Deviance
This is a long-term phenomenon in which workers repeatedly get away with a deviation from established procedures. The deviant behavior becomes normalized and no longer seems unsafe.
Basically, workers do things without getting hurt, so they keep doing it.
The more times they get away with it, the more they believe they can’t get hurt. This creates a false sense of security and confidence.
Inattention Blindness
This is the failure to notice a fully visible, but unexpected object because attention was engaged on another task, event, or object.
People tend to see only what they’re looking for.
When workers are focused on one thing, like getting a job done quickly, they may pay little attention to hazards that may be around them.
Expecting what is supposed to happen can result in missing the unexpected or unusual that is right in front of our faces.
Optimism Bias
Some may refer to this as looking through rose-colored glasses.
Humans tend to overestimate the likelihood of positive events and underestimate the likelihood of adverse events. People believe that they, themselves, are less likely to experience an adverse event.
It is an attitude of “accidents happen to other people, but won’t happen to me.”
Obliviousness
Some workers are simply unaware of the risks associated with the work they perform.
They blindly perform safety-sensitive tasks and either unknowingly avert an incident or actually suffer the consequences.
This can often affect newly hired employees, workers in a new industry, those whose role has changed, those using new equipment, or the under-supervised.
What safety looks like today, where safety needs to change, and how to create a safety culture.
10 Strategies to Avoid The Safety Monsters
These concepts are all natural human tendencies. But, it is important to stay vigilant and avoid complacent habits in the workplace.
The best approach to avoid complacency is a deliberate and ongoing effort. Here are 10 strategies to consider…
Organizations of all kinds use KPA’s EHS tools to maximize employee motivation, productivity, and retention.
With software, on-demand expertise, and award-winning training courses on your side, you’ll banish the safety monsters for good!
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