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SAFETY PSYCHOLOGIST IGGING DEEPER An exploration of the secrets of optimal safety performance Risk Tolerance – we should be scared, very, very scared? Well, in late 2010 I was approached by the editorial team of the Australasian Mine Safety Journal and asked whether I would be interested in contributing to the ongoing success of this excellent publication. The request was quite timely as I had, only a few months previously, been approached by the International Council of Mining and Metals (ICMM) to design and facilitate a global workshop concerned with the role of leading indicators in safety performance. The goal is to try to isolate some fundamental leading indicators that could be assessed against – throughout the mining and metals industries. A lofty goal, and we shall see how we go. You can be sure I shall provide detailed feedback about the outcomes of this Workshop as we move forward together. It is not my intention to continue to spruik my credentials and experience in the space we call “safety”. That can be easily clarified using the number one tool of scientific research available today – Google. Over the next several editions it is my intention to explore some of the aspects of workplace safety that we think we have become familiar with. What we shall do is place an empirical lens over some of the commonly held safety beliefs and see if they hold up to scientific scrutiny. After all, the safety budget in the mining industry is beyond my imagination. These are what I often refer to as “mega-numbers”. For most of us it is difficult to understand, let alone see, how these huge amounts of money are translating to the realities of a safer workplace. This is why we must, if we are going to be good custodians of the wealth of our communities, be sure that what we are spending our money on is actually providing a real return on investment. That is for next time. Right now I want to share with you a very personal experience that has certainly impacted the way I think about personal and corporate safety. On the 31st October 2008 I was cycling my morning route (approx. 80km) when I was about to call in to the Big M for a skim milk cappuccino. Sadly a motor vehicle did not see me and I was struck at a speed of around 70km/hr. To say I was nearly killed is almost 54 AUSTRALASIAN MINE SAFETY JOURNAL an understatement. The top left quadrant of my body took most of the damage. The Orthopods stopped counting the fractures at 24. The top parietal section of the cycling helmet just disintegrated never to be seen again. I have yet to meet a doctor (and I have met a few by now) who does not express an element of surprise that I am still on the planet, let alone vertical. There was then almost a month in hospital, having undergone some quite major reconstructive surgery. My net worth now goes up and down with the stock market. I am also grateful to the Titanium miners out there. I have a fair whack of your product holding my left arm/shoulder together. Needless to say, as a Safety Psychologist, spending a month lying pretty still in hospital leaves a lot of time for contemplation. There was a lot of that. I began to spend a lot of time analysing my own behaviour and how it may have contributed to the outcome of my being “squashed”. This period of internal reflection had me thinking about how I “measured” my success as a cyclist. The things we cyclists think about are average speed, cadence, heart rate movements, etc. The bulk of these would fall into our definition of lagging indicators. It is possible the heart rate can also be a leading indicator (if it hits 200 you should be concerned). We also generally became so focussed on these indicators we give scant attention to the risks that might exist within this environment. What really brought this home to roost for me was when I consider the actual process I was involved in when I was struck. I was changing lanes. Yes, you read that correctly. I was putting a 110kg (on a good day) guy on a pushbike potentially in front of a 1500kg motor vehicle. In our workplaces would we not call that being in “the line of fire”? Do we not conduct very thorough risk assessments on any processes which may expose our employees to a line-of-fire situation? Yet we cyclists place ourselves in line-of-fire situations most time we put on the yellow lycra and hit the road. Why!? What is clear is that I had become tolerant of the risks that surrounded me. That tolerance very nearly cost me my life. This experience has led me to seriously consider the many factors that contribute to our tolerance of risk. When we consider the bulk of workplace incidents we often find that someone has been tolerant of a risk somewhere in the causation sequence. You might say fair enough, after all is that not what a risk assessment is supposed to determine – acceptable risk. Yet I am going to suggest that the techniques that the majority of us use to assess risk are fundamentally flawed. We should be scared, very, very scared. More on that next time. David G Broadbent is the director of global safety consulting firm, TransformationalSafety.Com. He is recognised as a world leader in the areas of safety culture and safety leadership and the impacts that these constructs have upon accident causation. David is a regular contributor to international safety forums. David was a Metallurgist with the BHP Company, prior to changing career paths toward the field of applied psychology. This makes him one of a handful of safety psychologists in the world who also has a powerful “hands-on” industrial background. He is known for his ability to chat with workers at the “coal face” right through to the “board room”. More recently David was involved in a near fatal accident himself which has led him to focus even more heavily on accident causation and the interaction with perceived risk. His recent introduction of “risk tolerance” into the global safety vocabulary is developing significant interest worldwide. David can be found on Skype, Facebook, Twitter, and Linked- In or his email is broadbentd@ transfiormationalsafety.com