Does participation in workplace individual-level well-being interventions improve subjective well-being? Not so much according to this study. This study has already done the rounds, so there’s a good chance you’ve seen it. It surveyed >46k workers across 233 organisations in the UK. They included interventions like resilience and stress training, mindfulness, well-being apps, EAPs, counselling.… Continue reading Workplace well-being initiatives not found to improve worker well-being

Are positive leadership styles—e.g. authentic ethical, servant etc.—valid representations of leadership behaviours? Perhaps not, according to this upcoming study. This interesting study argued and empirically supported their hypothesis that positive leadership styles “conflate behaviors with subjective evaluations of leaders”. They found that: ·        “positive leadership styles are outcomes that depend on non-behavioral, evaluative factors, such as… Continue reading Positive leadership styles and causal illusions

What can moles & birds teach us about why organisations struggle to learn the contextually relevant lessons and prevent major accidents? A 1966 accident provides insights. A huge mining spoil tip collapsed (~33 m tall & 229k cubic meters), following heavy rain. The spoil tip was located on a mountain slope next to the Welsh… Continue reading Mini-post: Moles, birds and major accidents: The story of Aberfan

This inquiry covers the drowning death of a motorist as he drove off a vehicle ferry about 20m away from the bank. I’ve skipped a lot of the detailed findings to focus on a few of the SMS-related items. The coroner observed that: Finally, previous AMSA (the marine regulator) report findings were cited, including SMSs… Continue reading Coronial inquiry and drift into failure: a “rule based approach to driver behaviour was fraught with risk”

This paper examined the run-up to the Macondo blowout from a barrier element perspective, drawing on Andrew Hopkins’ account. NB. I found this a challenging and tad confusing paper to summarise; I just couldn’t always follow the logics from start to finish. So, if you’re confused by what I’ve written – I probably was too.… Continue reading Safety barriers: Organizational potential and forces of psychology

This preprint study may be of interest – it surveyed European pilots (n = 4,546) on their reasons for underreporting incidents and for presenteeism; also comparing atypically employed versus typically employed. They found: ·      Those in atypically employment showed higher frequencies of presenteeism and underreporting ·      Atypically employed were more likely to cite fear of disciplinary action… Continue reading Is it safe to be safe? Examining Underreporting and Presenteeism Among European Pilots: The Role of Employment Type

This study explored two different approaches to explain failure in an organisation: ·     The first is an individual blame logic – this seeks to find a guilty individual ·       The second is an organisational function logic – this aims to identify org. factors that favoured the event. The paper discusses both logics and their consequences… Continue reading A Review of Literature: Individual Blame vs. Organizational Function Logics in Accident Analysis

This meta-analysis of evidence on the contribution of leadership styles to followers’ mental health indices may interest you. Not a summary – but you can freely read the full study. 53 studies with 217 effect sizes, comprising >93k participants met inclusion criteria. They found that: ·        Transformational and destructive leadership were the strongest predictors of overall… Continue reading A Meta-Analysis of the Relative Contribution of Leadership Styles to Followers’ Mental Health

This upcoming summary explored how social factors permeate across organisations, thereby strengthening and weakening operational barriers. They argue that while technical and operational barriers are pretty definable—valves, interlocks, drop zones—what counts as an ‘organisational barrier’ is more elusive. They re-analyse Hopkins’ analysis of the Macondo blowout from a barrier perspective. Hopkins’ implicated several factors in… Continue reading Social forces, group think, normalisation of warnings and barrier system integrity

Another study from Dillon & Tinsley which looked at how near-miss events & reporting may increase our exposure to risk rather than improve learning and safety. Again, I’ve done a terrible job summarising this… This used 2 experiments with participants. In ex.1, participants read a vignette about a planned cruise that could be impacted by… Continue reading Near-miss events, risk messages, and decision making