SafetyInsights.org

Is Zero Harm a laudable approach or a misdirection–a utopian fantasy–associated with higher fatality rates?

Safe AF episode #8 dives into a paper which compares safety injury and fatality performance between zero and non-zero construction company adopters in the UK.

From: Sherratt, F., & Dainty, A. R. (2017). UK construction safety: a zero paradox?. Policy and practice in health and safety, 15(2), 108-116.

Please help share, rate & review, and feel free to support the pod via shouting a coffee.

Spotify: https://creators.spotify.com/pod/show/ben0261/episodes/Ep-8-The-harm-in-zero-harm-e354f4r

Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ep-8-the-harm-in-zero-harm/id1819811788?i=1000715977911

Shout me a coffee (one-off or monthly recurring)

Transcription:

For decades, the mantra of zero harm has echoed through our industries. For some, it’s the ultimate goal, the only acceptable goal, a clear beacon for safety, apparently. But what if the very philosophy intended to protect workers was actually linked to more serious accidents and even fatalities?

This week, we’re diving into a controversial, yet debated paper which questions whether pursuing zero might create a dangerous paradox, inadvertently increasing the very risks it aims to counter.

G’day everyone, I’m Ben Hutchinson, and this is Safe As, a podcast dedicated to the thrifty analysis of safety, risk, and performance research. Visit safetyinsights.org for more research.

So, this well-known and debated paper explored the links between major and fatal accidents in companies that have and haven’t adopted a zero harm philosophy. It’s from Sherratt and Dainty, 2017, published in Policy and Practice in Health and Safety.

So, what were the methods? They collected fatal and major accident data from the UK HSE under a Freedom of Information Request over the periods of 2011, 2012, and 2014, 2015. This data was then correlated to the top 20 construction contractors in the UK based on turnover.

Essentially, they looked online at the company’s webpages, identifying which ones had openly adopted zero harm philosophies. Nine had an explicit zero policy in place. Six companies operated a safety programme referencing zero, while the other three included clear statements around zero.

Providing background, the authors argue in their paper that “zero has become the biggest number in safety.” Despite the prevalence of zero in industry, the lack of an evidence-based evaluation of zero is really rather surprising. Zero has been mobilised in many ways: zero harm, beyond zero, vision zero, and more.

Some position it as a visionary journey, adopted as a principle for organisational management and leadership rather than a specific goal. For others, zero is a specific target with zero injuries and fatalities as the only acceptable value or goal. Some research found zero programmes often positioned as a tangible goal, something which can be counted and measured through a plethora of targets.

However, in one study, this utopia was challenged and even derided by the construction workers themselves, for whom the lived realities of their working lives told them that zero is and is likely to remain a utopian fantasy totally incompatible with the current challenges of production that they face every day.

Also, as argued in this paper, critics believe zero may stymie open dialogue and learning in organisations. Proponents argue that many construction organisations “have zeroes wrong” – they’re not doing it right, and focus on the numbers instead of the vision to inspire real change and innovation in practice. Others have argued that zero in any form can act as a distraction because of its allure of measurement. Thus, zero, in their view, creates a misdirection and efforts to cease all harm rather than the harm that really matters, stifling both learning and reporting in an industry which already struggles to report its accidents and incidents in an honest and timely fashion.

So, with that background out of the way, what did this study find? Well, overall, this data set suggests that working on a project subject to a zero safety policy or a program actually appears to slightly increase the likelihood of having a serious life-changing accident or fatality. This is what they called a “zero paradox.”

But importantly, the authors were careful to highlight both the limitations of the study data and that they make no claims about causality. For instance, we know of the statistical issues of incident data validity, and also the possibility of other explanations. Perhaps companies operating in more hazardous industries might be more likely to adopt zero as a response. I’ll cover more of the limitations and caveats later.

So let’s jump into some of the specifics. They found four fatal accidents occurred in zero companies; no fatal accidents occurred in non-zero companies. There were 214 major failures in companies with zero, and there were 135 major injuries in companies without a zero safety approach. When correlated to the volume of work, there were seven major or specified accidents per billion turnover for those with zero, and six accidents per billion turnover for those without zero.

So, taken together, the authors argued that a zero paradox could be in play, where you were marginally more likely to be involved in a major accident while working on a zero project compared to a non-zero. Or, as they aptly state, “being involved in a zero-affiliated UK construction project could, according to the paper, actually mean a greater risk of injury or death in practice.”

Again, with such a small difference between the adopters and non-adopters, it’s difficult to know whether this is actually a real statistical effect. In any case, they further argue that based on this data, at least, zero approaches would seem to struggle to be labelled a success, with more accidents rather than fewer under a zero-safety banner, or at least no real, determinable difference.

The zero possibly hasn’t made positive or negative contributions to practice, or perhaps even a negative impact. This suggests that their rhetoric of zero is masking the reality of construction site safety programs, which are neither innovating nor developing in their thinking or practice, beyond the application of this new branding. The author suggests that, perhaps, the UK construction industry simply isn’t mature enough for zero as a target or vision. However, considering the findings of this study, it’s possible that their disbenefits outweigh the benefits. And again, perhaps, zero is causing more harm than it is able to prevent.

This data suggests, even with its limitations, that there is at least the potential for an increase in accidents following the introduction of zero-safety on site. Further, there’s no guarantee that the implementation of zero-safety can ensure continued or even any reduction in accident rates overall. And indeed, it seems to have a limited impact in terms of catalyzing any significant step changes in improvement in safety performance.

So what were the limitations? Well, we’ve already covered some critical limitations. Expanding here, there’s just four years of data, and we’re dealing with incidents. Incidents are really problematic. Hallowell’s data previously suggested that incidents are highly, randomly distributed. It’s really difficult to find correlations with such gigantic data sets. We also don’t know how comparable each organization is, so whether we really can cleanly compare like-for-like, apples for apples.

So what do we make of the findings? So cards on the table, I am not a supporter of zero harm approaches. But I think, sensibly, it’s a single study; we shouldn’t make too much of it. But nevertheless, it does help shift the burden of evidence. We actually don’t have much evidence for or against the effects of zero harm approaches in safety.

More importantly, I think arguments for or against zero harm approaches probably make too much of these arguments. What I mean is, assuming that zero harm approaches will somehow statistically significantly impact performance, good or bad, is probably optimistic at best.

In any case, I concur with Drew Rae and Dave Proven on the Safety of Work podcast. If you don’t already have a zero harm approach, adopting it may not meet your needs. If you already have one, then reconsider the targets, the expectations, and the messaging just to ensure that it is meeting your needs. Is zero an illusion in your organization because people are afraid of reporting in fear of disrupting the statistics or hopes of a pizza party?

That’s it on Safe As. I’m Ben Hutchinson. Please help share, rate, and review, and check out safetyinsights.org for more research. Finally, feel free to support Safe As by shouting a coffee. Link in the show notes.