Are your safety procedures effective aids to help navigate safe and reliable work? Do you know? And, do your workers use and value those procedures?
Today we’re uncovering the painful realisation of how a compliance culture can erode trust, disengage workers and leave you dangerously exposed when things go wrong.
Today’s study is Peres, S. C., Smith, A., & Sasangohar, F. (2020). Worker-centered investigation of issues with procedural systems: Findings from interviews with a representative sample of workers in high-risk process industries. Journal of Loss Prevention in the Process Industries, 67, 104264.
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Transcript:
6.535333 16.535333 If your safety procedures feel less like an aid to help navigate safe and reliable performance and more like a document to protect the company from lawsuits, you’re not alone.
16.535333 26.535333 Today we’re uncovering the painful realisation of how a compliance culture can erode trust, disengage workers and leave you dangerously exposed when things go wrong.
26.535333 35.535333 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.
35.535333 38.535333 Visit safetyinsights.org for more research.
38.535333 53.535333 Today’s study is from Perez at L 2020, titled “Worker-centred investigation of issues with procedural systems, findings from interviews with a representative sample of workers in high-risk process industries.”
53.535333 57.535333 Published in Journal of Lost Prevention in the Process Industries.
57.535333 60.535333 This is one of several studies from this group of authors.
60.535333 63.535333 I’ll cover another one of their papers shortly.
63.535333 70.535333 This study explored the thoughts and perceptions of workers concerning procedure use and the purpose of procedures.
70.535333 76.535333 20 workers from the process industries, including refining, chemical plants and more, were included.
76.535333 78.535333 So what did they find?
78.535333 84.535333 Well, for changing procedures, most workers indicated going to their supervisor to start the change process.
84.535333 103.535333 However, some workers had a really negative view about the change process, citing “procedure change starting but never being completed,” or “it just takes too long,” or “workers not finding the process necessary for themselves or others,” or “the firm culture not approving of the process change itself.”
103.535333 113.535333 Some evidence suggested that a procedure change could vary between weeks to six months, and significant lapses really could affect workers’ propensity to even use the procedures.
113.535333 118.535333 Or if it took too long, then have them believe that their input isn’t even valued.
118.535333 126.535333 The authors’ side of study, suggesting that workers perceive procedure quality, was predictive of whether they used the procedure or not.
126.535333 135.535333 So for their perceptions on the utility of procedures, some workers indicated that using the procedure was about helping to mitigate potential liability issues.
135.535333 145.535333 That is, they see it more as an exercise by the organisation to cover their backs or the workers use it purely to cover their own backs from blame from the organisation.
145.535333 148.535333 They didn’t really see it as something that helped them do their work.
148.535333 163.535333 The authors also argue that if workers are expected to blindly follow procedures, then they are less likely to be critically thinking where it may be dangerous or inefficient to form the task as per the procedure, which has been called malicious compliance.
163.535333 178.535333 It’s noted that when procedural systems are designed for blind compliance and workers have this attitude towards them, it indicates that the workers experience of procedures as a tool for management, as opposed to a tool to support their performance and safety.
178.535333 180.535333 This is actually supported by other research too.
180.535333 191.535333 Again, on procedures, over half of the workers indicated that they depart from the procedures by either not following the steps exactly, or by not even using the procedure at all.
191.535333 197.535333 Other research has shown even up to 90% of people won’t follow procedures routinely.
197.535333 203.535333 Now, these procedural departures were usually due to equipment malfunction or contextual changes in the tasks.
203.535333 214.535333 Like from one worker’s perspective in this study, they said, I mean, you don’t deviate to the point where it’s dangerous, you just kind of, you operate, you know, you’re an operator, you operate the equipment.
214.535333 223.535333 For the reasons why, what reducing time was a major factor, of course, and this was regularly reported to be linked with pressure from immediate supervisors.
223.535333 236.535333 Other frequently reported reasons included worker experience, and when a task is physically impossible to complete due to equipment malfunction, then procedural departures are often seen as the only practical action to take.
236.535333 241.535333 The work has to get done, and to get the work done, they have to depart from the procedure.
241.535333 251.535333 Some workers indicated that their organization had processes for requesting a emergency procedural deviation, and they would actually use it under time.
251.535333 263.535333 So, rule departures in this study was really similar with other research, where workers depart from procedures that seem to be inaccurate or outdated, or contain unnecessary information.
263.535333 269.535333 Rule use also decreased over time for some workers due to familiarity with the task.
269.535333 276.535333 Indeed, for some workers, they had a real attitude of disinterest or even professional pride, due to their perception of procedures.
276.535333 284.535333 For example, if the task was seen to be mundane or they were too experienced, then they were less likely to use a procedure.
284.535333 293.535333 So, quoting the paper, this may suggest that experienced workers may develop procedures that are perceived as more efficient or adequate, experientially.
293.535333 300.535333 That is, the workers find smarter, more efficient, better ways of doing the work, so they follow their own internal processes.
300.535333 305.535333 Now, a trade-off here may be replacing knowledge in the world with knowledge in the head.
305.535333 313.535333 And this trade-off might increase the chance of forgetting key steps for safety-critical work, but that door also swings the other ways.
313.535333 321.535333 That sometimes we’re trying to capture procedures, things that really can’t be captured, very implicit knowledge that experienced operators have.
321.535333 329.535333 Now, the findings indicate that the management and implementation of procedures is quite a complex issue, and it becomes even more difficult in larger companies.
329.535333 337.535333 And implementing an effective procedural system requires more than the content of procedures, and it requires more than procedural training,
337.535333 344.535333 because our existing approaches might really fail to address critical elements like pressure from supervisors and management,
344.535333 353.535333 attitudes that the procedures are more a protection from liability, long turnaround times for revising procedures, a lack of real functional utility for people
353.535333 358.535333 that might be time-consuming, challenging to translate, a whole bunch of factors.
358.535333 369.535333 So, what the authors say is that procedures and training and a lot of the common procedural elements that we use are necessary, but not sufficient for an effective procedural system.
369.535333 379.535333 Therefore, understanding behavior pertaining to procedure requires a holistic understanding of all the sort of links between the procedural systems and their implementation
379.535333 385.535333 and the safety climate and all these other things within the organization, the very socio-technical reasons.
385.535333 396.535333 Finally, the authors argue that even if a company could produce practically perfect procedures and train workers to them, if the overarching business prioritizes production,
396.535333 406.535333 that is, production pressures, then workers will likely always be put into position where they are asked to violate procedures to save time and increase productivity.
406.535333 409.535333 So, what can we make of the findings?
409.535333 415.535333 Well, there’s a few things that come out of these types of studies, and I’ll cover, as I said, maybe one or two more of their studies in their future.
415.535333 423.535333 But perhaps we should see procedural systems as a tool for workers, and they really need to help create safe and reliable work.
423.535333 430.535333 And they’re not used as a big stick to hit them with. They’re not used for retrospective accountability and blame.
430.535333 441.535333 We need to have established methods for quickly getting approval for needed exceptions to procedures, you know, if the equipment has changed and the procedure is no longer appropriate or permittal work systems.
441.535333 452.535333 We need to have an effective and efficient system of continuous quality checks of the content and format, and we really need to ensure that it represents reality, the actual work that people do.
452.535333 455.535333 It needs to be a tool, a resource for action.
455.535333 461.535333 We need to confirm that procedures are easy for workers to use and tasks are as easy as possible to perform.
461.535333 468.535333 So, make it as easy as possible to do the right thing and more difficult to do the wrong thing.
468.535333 471.535333 And that really is a factor of design and human factors.
471.535333 476.535333 We should leverage empirical guidance regarding how procedure documents should be designed.
476.535333 490.535333 There actually is a lot of information out there on how to draft up a really more efficient, effective procedure and require that most and certainly the critical procedures be physically validated before they are deployed
490.535333 498.531271 and tested in the field and micro experiments ensure that they actually deliver the things that we expect them to deliver.
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