The Safety of Work
David Provan
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Top 10 The Safety of Work Episodes
Goodpods has curated a list of the 10 best The Safety of Work episodes, ranked by the number of listens and likes each episode have garnered from our listeners. If you are listening to The Safety of Work for the first time, there's no better place to start than with one of these standout episodes. If you are a fan of the show, vote for your favorite The Safety of Work episode by adding your comments to the episode page.
Ep.87 What exactly is Systems Thinking?
The Safety of Work
01/02/22 • 55 min
We will review each section of Leveson’s paper and discuss how she sets each section up by stating a general assumption and then proceeds to break that assumption down.We will discuss her analysis of:
- Safety vs. Reliability
- Retrospective vs. Prospective Analysis
- Three Levels of Accident Causes:
- Proximal event chain
- Conditions that allowed the event
- Systemic factors that contributed to both the conditions and the event
Discussion Points:
- Unlike some others, Leveson makes her work openly available on her website
- Leveson’s books, SafeWare: System Safety and Computers (1995) and Engineering a Safer World: Systems Thinking Applied to Safety (2011)
- Drew describes Leveson as a “prickly character” and once worked for her, and was eventually fired by her
- Leveson came to engineering with a psychology background
- Many safety professionals express concern regarding how major accidents keep happening and bemoaning - ‘why we can’t learn enough to prevent them?’
- The first section of Leveson’s paper: Safety vs. Reliability - sometimes these concepts are at odds, sometimes they are the same thing
- How cybernetics used to be ‘the thing’ but the theory of simple feedback loops fell apart
- Summing up this section: safety is not the sum of reliability components
- The second section of the paper: Retrospective vs. Prospective Accident Analysis
- Most safety experts rely on and agree that retrospective accident analysis is still the best way to learn
- Example - where technology changes slowly, ie airplanes, it’s acceptable to run a two-year investigation into accident causes
- Example - where technology changes quickly, ie the 1999 Mars Climate Orbiter crash vs. Polar Lander crash, there is no way to use retrospective analysis to change the next iteration in time
- The third section of the paper: Three Levels of Analysis
- Its easiest to find the causes that led to the proximal event chain and the conditions that allowed the event, but identifying the systemic factors is more difficult because it’s not as easy to draw a causal link, it’s too indirect
- The “5 Whys” method to analyzing an event or failure
- Practical takeaways from Leveson’s paper–
- STAMP (System-Theoretic Accident Model and Processes) using the accident causality model based on systems theory
- Investigations should focus on fixing the part of the system that changes slowest
- The exact front line events of the accident often don’t matter that much in improving safety
- Closing question: “What exactly is systems thinking?” It is the adoption of the Rasmussian causation model– that accidents arise from a change in risk over time, and analyzing what causes that change in risk
Quotes:
“Leveson says, ‘If we can get it right some of the time, why can’t we get it right all of the time?’” - Dr. David Provan
“Leveson says, ‘the more complex your system gets, that sort of local autonomy becomes dangerous because the accidents don’t happen at that local level.’” - Dr. Drew Rae
“In linear systems, if you try to model things as chains of events, you just end up in circles.’” - Dr. Drew Rae
“‘Never buy the first model of a new series [of new cars], wait for the subsequent models where the engineers had a chance to iron out all the bugs of that first model!” - Dr. David Provan
“Leveson says the reason systemic factors don’t show up in accident reports is just because its so hard to draw a causal link.’” - Dr. Drew Rae
“A lot of what Leveson is doing is drawing on a deep well of cybernetics theory.” - Dr. Drew Rae
Resources:
Applying Systems Thinking Paper by Leveson
Nancy Leveson– Full List of Publications
Ep.94 What makes a quality leadership engagement for safety?
The Safety of Work
04/17/22 • 49 min
The authors’ goal was to produce a scoring protocol for safety-focused leadership engagements that reflects the consensus of a panel of industry experts. Therefore, the authors adopted a multiphased focus group research protocol to address three fundamental questions:
1. What are the characteristics of a high-quality leadership engagement?
2. What is the relative importance of these characteristics?
3. What is the reliability of the scorecard to assess the quality of leadership engagement?
Just like the last episode’s paper, the research has merit, even though it was published in a trade journal and not an academic one. The researchers interviewed 11 safety experts and identified 37 safety protocols to rank. This is a good starting point, but it would be better to also find out what these activities look like when they’re “done well,” and what success looks like when the safety measures, protocols, or attributes “work well.”
The Paper’s Main Research Takeaways:
- Safety-focused leadership engagements are important because, if performed well, they can convey company priorities, demonstrate care and reinforce positive safety culture.
- A team of 11 safety experts representing the four construction industry sectors identified and prioritized the attributes of an effective leadership engagement.
- A scorecard was created to assess the quality of a leadership engagement, and the scorecard was shown to be reliable in independent validation.
Discussion Points:
- Dr. Drew and Dr. David’s initial thoughts on the paper
- Thoughts on quality vs. quantity
- How do the researchers define “leadership safety engagements”
- The three key phases:
- Phase 1: Identification of key attributes of excellent engagements
- Phase 2: Determining the relative importance of potential predictors
- Phase 3: Reliability check
- The 15 key indicators–some are just common sense, some are relatively creepy
- The end product, the checklist, is actually quite useful
- The next phase should be evaluating results – do employees actually feel engaged with this approach?
- Our key takeaways:
- It is possible to design a process that may not actually be valid
- The 37 items identified– a good start, but what about asking the people involved: what does it look like when “done well”
- No matter what, purposeful safety engagement is very important
- Ask what the actual leaders and employees think!
- We look forward to the results in the next phase of this research
- Send us your suggestions for future episodes, we are actively looking!
Quotes:
“If the measure itself drives a change to the practice, then I think that is helpful as well.” - Dr. David
“I think just the exercise of trying to find those quality metrics gets us to think harder about what are we really trying to achieve by this activity.” - Dr. Drew
“So I love the fact that they’ve said okay, we’re talking specifically about people who aren’t normally on-site, who are coming on-site, and the purpose is specifically a conversation about safety engagement. So it’s not to do an audit or some other activity.” - Dr. Drew
“The goal of this research was to produce a scoring protocol for safety-focused leadership engagements, that reflects the common consensus of a panel of industry experts.” - Dr. David
“We’ve been moving towards genuine physical disconnections between people doing work and the people trying to lead, and so it makes sense that over the next little while, companies are going to make very deliberate conscious efforts to reconnect, and to re-engage.” - Dr. Drew
“I suspect people are going to be begging for tools like this in the next couple of years.” - Dr. Drew
“At least the researchers have put a tentative idea out there now, which can be directly tested in the next phase, hopefully, of their research, or someone else’s research.” - Dr. Drew
Resources:
Ep.73 Does pointing and calling improve action reliability?
The Safety of Work
05/16/21 • 33 min
As our workplaces become more automated, it becomes the task of human workers to monitor the automated actions. At times, this may require a physical response or action on behalf of the human worker. So, while the physical load of workers has been lessened, their mental and emotional load has increased.
Tune in to hear us define pointing and calling and the ensuing discussion about its efficacy within the workplace.
Topics:
- What is pointing and calling?
- The lack of research on pointing and calling.
- How pointing and calling potentially slows down work.
- Measuring mental and physical demands.
- Practical takeaways.
Quotes:
“You point your index finger directly at that thing and you say aloud what that thing is currently showing”
“But this pointing gesture also acts as a cue to trigger this attentional shift towards the information.”
“The researchers did not state clearly what their hypotheses were. For those of you out there who are doing research, this is a big no-no when you’re doing an experiment...”
Resources:
08/30/20 • 47 min
We had trouble finding a suitable paper for this topic. Measuring and studying safety leadership often proves difficult. However, we use the paper Examining Attitudes, Norms, and Control Toward Safety Behaviors as Mediators in the Leadership-Safety Motivation Relationship.
As an aside, we offer a big “thank you” to those who shared our podcast with others. Our followers and listenership has grown considerably and we greatly appreciate it!
Topics:
- The two ways to improve safety.
- Why this is a reasonable model for studying the influence of safety.
- The theory of planned behavior.
- What you should never claim in your study.
- The reality of survey research.
- What mediators are and how they function.
- Takeaways from the study.
Quotes:
“They were lamenting in their systematic review that lots of attempts to intervene in behavior change weren’t based on theories.”
“So, what they’re really saying is, ‘ok, we know these might be different types of behaviors, but is it sufficient to lump them all together?’ And statistically, yes it is.”
“When we say that something ‘mediates’, we’re basically saying it’s like a multiplier in the middle.”
Resources:
Ep.86 Do we have adequate models of accident causation?
The Safety of Work
12/19/21 • 60 min
We will discuss how other safety science researchers have designed theories that use Rasmussen’s concepts, the major takeaways from Rasmussen’s article, and how safety professionals can use these theories to analyze and improve systems in their own organizations today.
Discussion Points:
- Rasmussen’s history of influence, and the parallels to (Paul) Erdős numbers in research paper publishing
- How Rasmussen is the “grandfather” of safety science
- Rasmussen’s impact across disciplines and organizational categories through the years
- The basics of this paper
- Why risk management models must never be static
- How other theorists and scientists take Rasmussen’s concepts and translate them into their own models and diagrams
- The paper’s summary of the evolution of theoretical approaches up until ‘now’ (1997)
- Why accident models must use a holistic approach including technology AND people
- How organizations are always going to have pressures of resources vs. required results
- Employees vs. Management– both push for results with minimal acceptable effort, creating accident risk
- Rasmussen identified we need different models that reflect the real world
- Takeaways for our listeners from Rasmussen’s work
Quotes:
“That’s the forever challenge in safety, is people have great ideas, but what do you do with them? Eventually, you’ve got to turn it into a method.” - Drew Rae
“These accidental events are shaped by the activity of people. Safety, therefore, depends on the control of people’s work processes.” - David Provan
“There’s always going to be this natural migration of activity towards the boundaries of acceptable performance.” - David Provan
“This is like the most honest look at work I think I’ve seen in any safety paper.” - Drew Rae
“If you’re a safety professional, just how much time are you spending understanding all of these ins and outs and nuances of work, and people’s experience of work? ...You actually need to find out from the insiders inside the system. ” - David Provan
“‘You can’t just keep swatting at mosquitos, you actually have to drain the swamp.’ I think that’s the overarching conceptual framework that Rasmussen wanted us to have.” - David Provan
Resources:
Ep.91 How can we tell when safety research is C.R.A.A.P?
The Safety of Work
02/27/22 • 49 min
We will go through each letter of the amusing and memorable acronym and give you our thoughts on ways to make sure each point is addressed, and different methodologies to consider when verifying or assuring that each element has been satisfied before you cite the source.
Sarah Blakeslee writes (about her CRAAP guidelines): Sometimes a person needs an acronym that sticks. Take CRAAP for instance. CRAAP is an acronym that most students don’t expect a librarian to be using, let alone using to lead a class. Little do they know that librarians can be crude and/or rude, and do almost anything in order to penetrate their students’ deep memories and satisfy their instructional objectives. So what is CRAAP and how does it relate to libraries? Here begins a long story about a short acronym...
Discussion Points:
- The CRAAP guidelines were so named to make them memorable
- The five CRAAP areas to consider when using sources for your work are:
- Currency- timeliness, how old is too old?
- Relevance- who is the audience, does the info answer your questions
- Authority- have you googled the author? What does that search show you?
- Accuracy- is it verifiable, supported by evidence, free of emotion?
- Purpose- is the point of view objective? Or does it seem colored by political, religious, or cultural biases?
- Takeaways:
- You cannot fully evaluate a source without looking AT the source
- Be cautious about second-hand sources– is it the original article, or a press release about the article?
- Be cautious of broad categories, there are plenty of peer-reviewed, well-known university articles that aren’t credible
- To answer our title question, use the CRAAP guidelines as a basic guide to evaluating your sources, it is a useful tool
- Send us your suggestions for future episodes, we are actively looking!
Quotes:
“The first thing I found out is there’s pretty good evidence that teaching students using the [CRAAP] guidelines doesn’t work.” - Dr. Drew
“It turns out that even with the [CRAAP] guidelines right in front of them, students make some pretty glaring mistakes when it comes to evaluating sources.” - Dr. Drew
“Until I was in my mid-twenties, I never swore at all.” - Dr. Drew
“When you’re talking about what someone else said [in your paper], go read what that person said, no matter how old it is.” - Dr. Drew
“The thing to look out for in qualitative research is, how much are the participants being led by the researchers.” - Dr. Drew
“So what I really want to know when I’m reading a qualitative study is not what the participant answered. I want to know what the question was in the first place.” - Dr. Drew
Resources:
Ep.85 Why does safety get harder as systems get safer?
The Safety of Work
11/28/21 • 55 min
Find out our thoughts on this paper and our key takeaways for the ever-changing world of workplace safety.
Topics:
- Introduction to the paper & the Author
- “Adding more rules is not going to make your system safer.”
- The principles of safety in the paper
- Types of safety systems as broken down by the paper
- Problems in these “Ultrasafe systems”
- The Summary of developments of human error
- The psychology of making mistakes
- The Efficiency trade-off element in safety
- Suggestions in Amalberti’s conclusion
- Takeaway messages
- Answering the question: Why does safety get harder as systems get safer?
Quotes:
“Systems are good - but they are bad because humans make mistakes” - Dr. Drew Rae
“He doesn’t believe that zero is the optimal number of human errors” - Dr. Drew Rae
“You can’t look at mistakes in isolation of the context” - Dr. Drew Rae
“The context and the system drive the behavior. - Dr. David Provan
“It’s part of the human condition to accept mistakes. It is actually an important part of the way we learn and develop our understanding of things. - Dr. David Provan
Resources:
Griffith University Safety Science Innovation Lab
The Paradoxes of Almost Totally Safe Transportation Systems by R. Amalberti
Risk Management in a Dynamic society: a Modeling problem - Jens Rasmussen
The ETTO Principle: Efficiency-Thoroughness Trade-Off: Why Things That Go Right Sometimes Go Wrong - Book by Erik Hollnagel
Ep.81 How does simulation training develop Safety II capabilities?
Navigating safety: Necessary Compromises and Trade-Offs - Theory and Practice - Book by R. Amalberti
10/17/21 • 37 min
This paper reveals some really interesting findings and it would be valuable for companies to take notice and possibly change the way they implement incident report recoMmendations.
Topics:
- Introduction to the paper
- The general process of an investigation
- The Hypothesis
- The differences between the reports and their language
- The results of the three reports
- Differences in the recommendations on each of the reports
- The different ways of interpreting the results
- Practical Takeaways
- Not sharing lessons learned from incidents - let others learn it for themselves by sharing the report.
- Summary and answer to the question
Quotes:
“All of the information in every report is factual, all of the information is about the same real incident that happened.” Drew Rae
“These are plausibly three different reports that are written for that same incident but they’re in very different styles, they highlight different facts and they emphasize different things.” Drew Rae
“Incident reports could be doing so much more for us in terms of broader safety in the organization.” David Provan
“From the same basic facts, what you select to highlight in the report and what story you use to tell seems to be leading us toward a particular recommendation.” - Drew Rae
Resources:
Griffith University Safety Science Innovation Lab
Ep. 63 How subjective is technical risk assessment?
The Safety of Work
01/24/21 • 48 min
As risk assessment is such a central topic in the world of safety science, we thought we would dedicate another episode to discussing a facet of this subject. We loop back to risk matrices and determine how to score risks.
Join us as we try to determine the subjectivity of risk assessment and the pitfalls of such an endeavor.
Topics:
- Risk matrices.
- Why the paper we reference is a trustworthy source.
- Scoring risks.
- How objective are we?
- How to interpret risk scores.
- What the risk-rating is dependent upon.
- Practical takeaways.
Quotes:
“The difference between an enumeration and a quantitative value is that enumeration has an order attached to it. So it let’s us say that ‘this thing is more than that thing.’ “
“I think this was a good way of seeing whether the differences or alignment happened in familiar activities or unfamiliar activities. Because then you can sort of get an idea into the process, as well as the shared knowledge of the group...”
“So, what we see is, if you stick to a single organization and eliminate the outliers, you’ve still got a wide spread of scores on every project.”
“We’re already trying pretty hard and if we’re still not converging on a common answer, then I think we need to rethink the original assumption that there is a common answer that can be found...”
Resources:
Ep.88 Why do organisations sometimes make bad decisions?
The Safety of Work
01/16/22 • 52 min
While this paper was written over half a century ago, it is still relevant to us today - particularly in the Safety management industry where we are often responsible for offering solutions to problems, and implementing those solutions, requires decisions to be made by top management.
This is another fascinating piece of work that will broaden your understanding of why organisations often struggle with solving problems that involve making decisions.
Topics:
- Introduction to the research paper: A Garbage Can Model of Organisational Choice
- Organised anarchies
- Phenomena explained by this paper
- Examples of the garbage can models
- Standards Committees
- Enforceable undertakings process
- How to influence the process
- Deciding on who makes decisions
- Conclusion - most problems will get solved
- Practical takeaways
- Not to get discouraged when your problem isn’t solved in a particular meeting
- Being mindful of where your decision-making energy is spent
- Problems vs Solutions vs Decision-making
- Have multiple solutions ready for problems that may come up - but don’t force them all the time.
Quotes:
“Decisions aren’t made inside people’s heads, decisions are made in meetings, so we’ve got to understand the interplay between people in looking at how decisions are made.” - Dr. Drew Rae
“Incident investigations are a great example of choice opportunities.” - Dr. Drew Rae
“It’s probably a good reflection point for people to just think about how many decisions certain roles in the organization are being asked to be involved in.” - Dr. David Provan
Resources:
Griffith University Safety Science Innovation Lab
A Garbage Can Model of Organizational Choice (Wikipedia Page)
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FAQ
How many episodes does The Safety of Work have?
The Safety of Work currently has 126 episodes available.
What topics does The Safety of Work cover?
The podcast is about Safety, Management, Research, Podcasts, Social Sciences, Science and Business.
What is the most popular episode on The Safety of Work?
The episode title 'Ep. 119: Should we ask about contributors rather than causes?' is the most popular.
What is the average episode length on The Safety of Work?
The average episode length on The Safety of Work is 46 minutes.
How often are episodes of The Safety of Work released?
Episodes of The Safety of Work are typically released every 7 days.
When was the first episode of The Safety of Work?
The first episode of The Safety of Work was released on Nov 11, 2019.
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