SafetyInsights.org

“some safety effort functions as “safety clutter:” work that consumes time and resources without improving safety”

A new article on safety clutter worth your time from Yaqoob Raheemy, Matthew Hallowell, Helen Lingard & Fred Sherratt.

Shared under an open access licence.

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Extracts:

·        “safety clutter is an adjective, not a noun. Clutter is not the safety activity itself, but a description of how the activity is carried out”

·        “A pre- job safety brief, for example, is not clutter by definition. However, clutter can exist in how the brief is designed, delivered, documented, or repeated”

·        “This principle matters because it avoids the assumption that certain safety practices should be removed as a whole. Instead, it focuses attention on the aspects of implementation that create burden without safety benefit”

·        “Safety clutter is best understood as waste within a safety effort that, as implemented, consumes attention, effort, and resources without improving the safety of work”

·        “what seems like clutter in one organization may deliver value in another”

·        “today’s clutter was often yesterday’s safety solution. The findings show that clutter is not usually created in bad faith. Many requirements begin as reasonable responses to real problems”

·        “safety clutter is easy to add and difficult to remove. The findings show an imbalance in how safety systems evolve”

·        “Two overarching forms are identified: conditional clutter, where an otherwise useful effort becomes clutter because of its design, delivery, access, or use; and pure clutter, where the effort is inherently low value”

·        “Conditional clutter comprises three families (Excessive, Irrelevant, Inaccessible), while pure clutter comprises one (Invalid)”

·        Excessive clutter includes overcomplicated, overdone and repetitive

·        Irrelevant clutter includes misguided, misplaced and dead-ends

·        Inaccessible clutter includes unreachable, noisy and buried