Why Dont Workers Say Something

When They See Something Unsafe?

EHS Management, Safety Culture and Behavioral Safety
Justin Scace
Friday - July 14, 2017

Every day, workers witness actions that they know are unsafepotentially
disastrous actions that could almost certainly be stoppedbut they dont voice
their concerns. Why are people inhibited in these situations? Why do we so often
stay silent?

KatarzynaBialasiewicz / iStock / Getty Images Plus / Getty Images

At Safety 2017, the annual professional development conference and exposition of

the American Society of Safety Engineers (ASSE), Phillip Ragain of the RAD
Group explored this cognitive phenomenon in a session entitled Hardwired
Inhibitions.

Research indicates that when they see something they think is unsafe, people
speak up only about 39% of the time, said Ragain. This number held true across
different industries, countries, and cultures. Obviously, this is not often enough.

Stop Work Authority and the Context Effect

EHS managers hope that granting stop work authority without fear of retaliation will
encourage employees to say something when they witness an unsafe situation.
But does it fix the problem? Unfortunately, the answer is no, said Ragain97% of
workers said that they were given the authority to stop work at their company, but
the 39% rate of stepping in to correct the situation still held fast.

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The problem with stop work authority is that it only addresses one of many factors,
said Ragain, and that is the fear of formal punishment for perceived
insubordination or slowing of productivity. The thing is, there are plenty of informal
punishments that may still apply; people who want to speak up could fear being
ostracized by coworkers, overlooked for good work by their supervisors, and the
list goes on. In essence, the authority in stop work authority is an illusion,
explained Ragain.

Despite these fears regarding safety interventions, most workers do take this
responsibility very seriously, and they believe that they would speak up. But in the
moment, they usually say nothing. Why?

It has a great deal to do with something called the Context Effect. Basically, this
effect results from an innate tendency that what we think about, care about, and
remember is determined by our immediate context. To demonstrate this, Ragain
found a volunteer in the audience and showed him two colors, white and black.
They then had a verbal exchange very much like this:

Sir, what color is this?

White.
Good. And this one?
Black.
Yes. And this?
White.
And this?
Black.
This one again?
White.
Great. And this one?
Black.
Yes. What do cows drink?
Milk.
Thank you.

Of course, cows do not drink milk. They drink water. However, given the context of
the conversation, the volunteer instinctively said something that he knew
intellectually to be false. Its a cognitive trick, explained Ragain, one that is put to
good use by salesmen and waiters who use context to put customers in an
empathic state in order to make them more likely to buy or order a particular item.

So, what does this have to do with safety interventions? The production context is
very different from the safety meeting context, said Ragain. They shape and affect
decisions in different ways, and while workers will say in a safety meeting without
doubt or hesitation that they would speak up against something unsafe, it could
end up being a different story on the actual jobsite.

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Other Inhibiting Forces
Beyond the Context Effect, there are multiple other cognitive forces at work that
can prevent workers from voicing safety concerns. Ragain detailed four in
particular that are especially powerful in a work situation.

1. Production pressure. It literally changes the way we see the world, said
Ragain. It narrows focus, makes you tense, and everything not related to
what you need to get done fades into the background and loses
significance.
2. Unit bias. To a cognitive psychologist, bias is a filter that makes us
perceive reality differently, and unit bias refers to the fact that people are
strongly inclined to finish a given unit or task before changing what they are
doing. Consider the example of a manufacturing manager who says Ill be
right there, and finishes a relatively unimportant e-mail before going to the
line when a safety issue occurs. With unit bias, workers have seen
something unsafe but they just want to finish the current task in front of
them before saying something, said Ragain.
3. Deference to authority. We dont always speak up to authorities or in
the presence of authorities, noted Ragain. If an authority asks you to do
something wrong or to ignore something that is wrong, people defer
responsibility to that authority figure.
4. The Bystander Effect. Simply put, the more people there are, the less
likely we are to speak up, said Ragain. In one study, 70% of participants,
individually, would help an old lady who fell; however, if only one other
person is around when the lady falls, this percentage drops to only 7%. We
assume other people will help (or, in the case of safety interventions, will
speak up)its called diffusion of responsibility.

A Perfect Storm
If your systems and management are phenomenal, theres a chance that the four
factors above dont present an issue at your company. But even without these
factors in play, there is something else more ingrained that can keep us silent in
the face of disaster, said Ragain, and that is the perfect storm of reactance, social
incongruence, and confirmation bias.

Reactance is the natural urge to resist or do the opposite of what someone

tells you to do. Its the human need for exercising autonomy and
independence, explained Ragain. When a worker speaks up against an
unsafe action, reactance or defensiveness can be triggered in the other
worker who is performing the unsafe action. Research shows that across
industries, 28% of offending workers become defensive in these situations,
and 1 in 6 actually become angry.

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 Social incongruence is the stress that we feel when we are in tension with
others. Part of being human is being social and connected with those
around us, noted Ragain, and the tension that could result from speaking up
is profound. Were wired to get away from that feeling.
Confirmation bias is evidenced by the fact that people are extremely good
at justifying what they have already concluded. We can rationalize anything
by paying attention to things we want to believe and discarding everything to
the contrary, said Ragain. Good examples of thought processes rooted in
confirmation bias include, No one else has said anything, so it must not be
that big of a deal, or It wont make a difference if I speak up.

What Can Be Done?

In the face of all of these cognitive forces and innate social tendencies we share as
human beings, safety professionals want to know what can be done to address the
problem at work. Can we be rewired to say something when we see something?

There are two steps in particular that can help improve the situation, said Ragain.

1. Simply be aware of these biases, and provide your employees with

awareness of them as well. Being aware of these biases and inhibiting
factors allows us to overcome them.
2. Build a culture where workers are confident that they can speak up without
producing defensiveness (i.e., reactance). When this confidence is present,
workers will stop reasoning backwards and falling victim to confirmation
bias.

Instead of becoming defensive when another worker speaks up, train your
employees to see safety interventions from a different perspective. To help them
do this, encourage them to respond to an intervention with one simple statement
that is helpful for both parties, said Ragain.

Thank you for watching my back goes a long way.

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