The Safety Mindset: Develop a Plan of Action

In previous articles on LinkedIn, I have written about Situational Awareness and the OODA Loop and how both of these thought processes help to improve Safety Performance. When you read both these articles, you may ask yourself the question: “Why do some people make the right decision quickly and effortlessly and others struggle to make a decision at all?” I’ve also seen comments on safety posts here on LinkedIn from Safety Professionals (and others) along the line of “Why do smart people make dumb decisions?”

               Before answering that question here, I highly recommend reading “The Unthinkable” by Amanda Ripley. In this book, Amanda Ripley details the thought processes that separate survivors of life threatening critical incidents. Her research in to the neurobiology and psychology of people, detailed through interviews of survivors, neurobiologists and psychologists will give insight in to the mindset that separates survivors from victims. Or to put it succinctly in meeting our goal of preventing injuries, the unhurt from the hurt. The conclusion Amanda drew from her efforts is simple; the message she delivers as to how to help develop positive human performance in a crisis is clear and invaluable.

               Now back to Situational Awareness and the OODA loop. A keen understanding of what is going on around you is very important to avoiding being involved in a critical situation that places you in harm’s way. In the OODA loop, that’s OBSERVE. But the key process of staying safe and avoiding harm is really determined in the ORIENT phase.

               In ORIENT, we are mentally comparing what we see, hear, smell, and feel to what is a normal environment around us. If we determine that our senses are picking up any abnormal occurrences, we need to take action. But how do we determine if what we see is abnormal? Furthermore, how do we DECIDE what to do?

               We develop memory of the precursor events (hazards) of undesirable outcomes (injuries, property damage, etc.). None of us is born with a database of events or hazards that lead to undesirable outcomes in our memory; we acquire that by learning or experience. Children may not realize what injury a hot object can cause unless they touch it. We may not realize how bad the injury from a same level fall can be unless we experience it. We may think that the news stories about criminal activity in an area are exaggerated, until we become the victim of a crime. Learned experience regarding outcomes of interacting with hazards will remain in memory for a long time as well as the precursor event(s) leading to the hazard.

               Another way of gaining that experience, without suffering the pain of an undesirable outcome is through training and education. Quality training helps us identify the hazards and select the appropriate intervention (control) to prevent the undesirable outcome from happening. As we observe the situation, our mind compares whet we are observing to our known information database of hazards and selects the appropriate control based on our training. In the absence of a known hazard control, we should stop and/or avoid the hazardous situation. This last action is important to injury prevention and survival (Also called Stop Work – why we developed his concept in Safety!).

Training should not only include hazard control measures, but why those measures need to be implemented and how they prevent injuries from occurring. Falling wearing fall arrest equipment is not going to be a pleasant experience during the arrest process, but the outcome of hitting the concrete floor 50 feet below you will be much worse. Isolating and locking out a section of a high pressure hot water system may take time and be inconvenient, but not compared to the outcome of being hit with 150 PSI, 2000 F hot water. Great training allows us to visualize the hazard in our minds so we can select and apply the appropriate hazard control.

As Ripley detailed in her book, one factor that separated survivors from victims in critical incidents was repetitive training in hazard recognition and the action to take to avoid the outcome of the hazard. This is why we do fire drills in schools (yes, there were fires with lives lost in schools) and our workplaces (and should do them at home). It is also why we should be doing refresher training on workplace safety topics; so people have a clear action plan to avoid undesirable outcomes.

Great training is not only classroom based, but involves doing some hands on practice as well. The closer we can get to real world situations that force trainees to think about what the appropriate hazard control would be AND implement it, the greater the probability will be that they will be unhurt (or no damage occur). One reason police officers (and armed citizens) are practicing using laser training simulators for use of force critical incidents is so they get this vital skill right when faced with life threatening situations. Some of the scenarios played on the screen are very real, enabling trainees to make mistakes, correct mistakes and retain their learning for a while; think of it as programming a computer (memory reinforcement).

 Go ahead, have trainees isolate a system, make it complex enough to have a source of energy that is difficult to discover and isolate so trainees can experience an incomplete lockout. If doing emergency response training, have your trainees respond to a simulated spill, including wearing appropriate PPE. Do a plant tour and point out different types of machine guarding so employees know what proper guarding is and recognize when it is absent. If possible, have trainees (operators and laborers) dig a trench and select appropriate trenching hazard controls. (One good exercise here would be to have an experienced operator use both benching and sloping so trainees can see the difference.) This can also serve as a final exam for the course (with the option for a redo on a modified version of the hazard control scenario for those who failed) as performance is what we want to instill.

If you can’t do a hands on experience, have trainees explain how and why they have selected hazard controls for a given verbal or written hazard. The idea here is to get them to visualize the hazard and select the control based on their observations and mental visualization of the situation and hazards. Discuss why some controls are better than others or why controls may not work or why we may want to avoid the hazard altogether. What the actual or mental visualization does is allow the person to determine if a hazard exists, select the appropriate hazard control from learned memory, and then implement it. When the time from recognition of hazards and selection of controls is reduced, then the exposure to the hazard is reduced, reducing the possibility of injury or property damage. This is why quality training and encouraging mental visualization exercises pay great dividends in injury and property damage avoidance.  

The important takeaway here is that trainees (and the rest of us) in the real world should be OBSERVING their environment constantly and determining what to avoid. And if avoidance of a situation is not possible, what can we do to safely interact with that situation in the ORIENT and DECIDE phase. Then ACT on what you have decided as a hazard control.

Read The Unthinkable. You may be convinced that this approach works.