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Introduction

Clearly, tremendous progress has beenmade in understanding and applying riskmanagement strategies, procedures andconditions to businesses over the lastfew decades.

Unfortunately, in many instancesanticipated results have not achievedexpectations and others have appearedto have failed.

Driver behaviour (human error and non-compliance with safety requirements) areoften the reasons given when businessesrisk management programs do notachieve desired results.

While risk management professionalshave acknowledged the human elementas a major contributor to accidents andinjuries it has often been accepted bymany that little can be done about it.

However, advances by safetypsychologists over the last few yearshave demonstrated the ability to assessbehavioural r isk to both screen anddevelop safety aware and committeddrivers and employees.

This article will provide you with anunderstanding of the human element inr isk management and how driverbehaviour can be assessed anddeveloped to avoid human erroraccidents and injuries.

Major Insurers recommend that anyindustry or business committed toreducing incidents, injuries and losseswill benefit by understanding andaddressing driver safety with theseimportant strategies and tools.

Human Error

Safety professionals generally agree thatbetween 90% to 96%* of all acc identsinvolve some element of human error.

Often accident investigations find humanerror to be the direct cause.

Human error may result from a variety orcombination of fac tors to inc lude poorjudgment or perception, stress, distraction,fat igue or non-compliance with safetysystems or procedures.

For the motor industry, human error canoccur at all levels of an organization:

n From management not adhering toprocedures, taking shortcuts withscheduling or load irregularities

n to workshop inadequacies or poormaintenance leading to catastrophicequipment failures.

For the driver, particularly for heavy motor,even small errors at speed or in congestedareas can accumulate and escalate intounrecoverable events.

Research studies over the last 15 years inAustralia and the US have overwhelminglydemonstrated that human error is most oftenthe result of undeveloped psychological orpersonal safety awareness.

Refer to insert on page 2.

* Det Norske Veritas / Dupont

New Safety Awareness

Traditionally, and understandably, safetyawareness has primarily focused on theenvironment and c limate in whichbusinesses operate.

Environmental Safety Awareness or ESA isthe knowledge of hazards in the environmentand the proper tools (engineering) and riskmanagement sys tems, procedures andtraining (SHE or OH&S) to avoid them.

Environmental Safety Awareness is asrelevant today as ever, however there is anemerging understanding and new focus oneach individual’s psychological or PersonalSafety Awareness (PSA).

Personal Safety Awareness (PSA) providesan advanced understanding of humanpsychology and the decision processes thatunderlie how people perceive, think andmake judgments in safety sens it ivesituations.

In s imple terms, an individual’s PSA iscomprised of several thinking constructs,(safety attitudes or motivators) that influencetheir perceptions, judgment and awarenessof their personal ability and responsibility toavoid risks by managing hazards in theirenvironment.

A business’ risk management “vehicle” maybe assessed by its visible adherence to ESAbut it will be “driven” by its people’s PSA –their motivation, ability and responsibility tothink and behave safely.

There is no doubt that implementing riskmanagement strategies is a must for anyviable business today.

Unfortunately, no matter how well resourcedor skillfully and professionally implemented,even good risk management systems canappear to fail.

W hile developments in workplace safetytraining, enhanced procedural initiatives, andrisk management strategies have achievedexcellent results, the greatest challengecontinues to be to understand and eliminatehuman error incidents.

Human error and non-compliance are oftenthe reasons given as to why manybusinesses do not achieve anticipated ordesired results from their risk managementinitiatives.

Arguably, however, incidents and injuriesthat are the result of a misapplication or non-compliance with a business ’ r iskmanagement procedure are not structurallyrisk management failures!

Most often, human error accidents andinjuries are due to unsafe workplace thinkingand behavioural factors (PSA), rather thanenvironmental factors (ESA).

Of course, risk management must be acontinuous, improving and evolving process.

It seems clear that the new frontier and nextstep in the evolution of risk management willbe the ability for businesses, organizationsand communities, and their insurers, toaddress human error and non-compliancethinking and behaviours.

Human error and non-compliance accidentspredominantly result f rom undevelopedpsychological safety thinking constructs(safety atti tudes) in individuals, of tencontributed to, and reinforced by poorlydeveloped safety cultures in organizations.

A business safety culture, and its ability tosuccess ful ly implement effect ive r iskmanagement procedures, will be dependentupon the level of “personal safetyawareness” and commitment of bothmanagement and employees.

Personal Safety Awareness

Personal Safety Awareness, like other typesof knowledge and skills may be acquiredthrough exposure to direct learning but ismost of ten learned “non-tradit ionally”through informal life experiences.

Every person will have different levels ofPSA. It is not wrong to have lower safetyawareness. Many highly ski lled andintelligent people do.

Research across many industries, however,overwhelmingly demonstrates that peoplewith lower personal safety awareness aremore likely to behave unsafely, placing themat greater risk for accidents and injuries.

In Australia, many across-industry studiesof have shown that people with lowerpersonal safety awareness have the highestproportion of accidents and injuries.

The Safety Attitudes

People, of course, will behave unsafely ifthey are not properly trained. The puzzle is:why do some fully trained people continueto behave unsafely?

Safety psychologists have identified threecore constructs (safety attitudes) that affectand motivate how people think, reasonoutcomes, and make decisions on how tobehave, part icular ly in safety sensitivesituations.

Briefly they are:

1 Personal responsibility and control(rational thinking)

2. Risk perception and avoidance(judgment)

3 Stress awareness and tolerance (distraction or fatigue resistant).

Psychologically, these three constructs notonly determine likely safety behaviour butare reflective of how a person defines whothey are and how they live their life.

Psychologists typically refer to this thinkingstructure theory as “locus-of-control”.

A person’s locus-of-control refers to theatt itudes or beliefs about who or whatcontrols their behaviour and outcomes andreaches far beyond an individual’s safetyawareness into their personal identity, familyand community life.

In a safety context, higher personal safetyaware individuals have an “internal” locus-of-control and generally take responsibilityfor their own safety behaviour and accidentand injury prevention.

Internal locus-of-control developed peopleare more able to see the relationshipbetween their own behaviour and outcomes– cause and effect, for example:

n Unsafe behaviour equals moreaccidents and injuries

n Following safety procedures reducesmy chances for an accident andinjuries.

Individuals with an “external” locus-of-control, (lower personal safety awareness),tend to blame accidents on “external” factorslike the weather, road conditions, someoneelse, probability or bad luck.

People’s shortcuts with safety, non-compliance with procedures and riskybehaviours are usually the result of externallocus-of-control thinking:

n accidents are inevitable

n safety procedures can’t stop accidents

n you can’t control fate.

What confounds and frustrates many safetyprofessionals and safety risk managers iswhy some people who have been trained,equipped and know the procedures – oftendon’t follow them?

It is necessary to understand that trained“knowledge” is not the same as the “safetyattitudes” motivated by locus-of-control.

Information stored as knowledge (safetytraining) can be negated or overridden byexternal locus-of -control thinking orimpressions (undeveloped safety awarenessattitudes), for example, in the chart below:

Fleet Owners Driving AttitudesAUSTRALIAN FINANCIAL REVIEW, MARCH 1998

186 fleet drivers were given risk ratings based on their attitude to personal responsibility. Accident records for thefollowing year showed those with a poor attitude had far more accidents than others.

Of a total of 210 accidents by fleet vehicles, 140, or exactly two-thirds, involved high-risk drivers. The average drivershad 58 accidents, or 27.6 percent of the total, while those adjudged safer personalities had only 12 accidents, or just 5.7per cent of the total.

The contrast was even more striking when the researchers looked at the relative severity of theaccidents, as measured by work hours lost under worker’s compensation. The high-risk one-thirdaccounted for 71.8 per cent of time lost (at 2,581 hours) while the low-risk one-third contributedonly 0.4 per cent (at 16 hours lost).

Trained Knowledge or Information ... Overriding Attitude or Impression

I will be healthier if I lose some weight ... I feel better when I eat.

I know PPE is for my safety ... It is inconvenient/uncomfortable/looks silly.

I know I should use it ... I don’t like people telling me what I should do.

1. R-SAFERecruiting Safety Aware Focused Employees

All managers and employees should beassessed for safety awareness as well asskills and experience before placing theminto safety sensitive environments and jobs.This is particularly true for the driver of heavymotor vehicles.

Psychometric surveys of personal safetyawareness have been developed by safetypsychologists and can provide insight intolikely behaviours on-the-job.

R-SAFE, the newest version of the AccidentRisk Management (ARM) Survey developedspecifically for the heavy motor industry, isthe result of more than 15 years research.

R-SAFE measures core elements ofpersonal safety awareness:

n Safety Control – personal responsibility for safety

n Risk Perception – awareness and avoidance

n Stress Tolerance – fatigue resistance

n Safe Driver – professional operator.

Accuracy and Candidness (honesty) inapproach to the survey are also importantelements of R-SAFE to ensure fairness anda level playing field for recruiting.

Safety Recruitment Assessments are bestuti lised to screen large numbers ofapplicants quickly, usually for lower orunskilled positions.

2. ASA CoachingInduction for New Employees

With the introduction of an Advanced SafetyAwareness (ASA) Induction program for newemployees prior to plac ing them intohazardous environments and higher riskpositions (driving heavy motor), personalsafety awareness can be developed veryquickly and efficiently.

ASA provides new or existing employeeswith a quick and efficient online personalassessment and self -coaching sessionsupported by a qualif ied and fully trainedsafety awareness coach (PaQS trainedemployee or industry provider).

Employees (dr ivers for example) arecoached to achieve recognition of theirpersonal ability and responsibility to exercisepersonal control of safety in all environmentsand situations, regardless of how innocuousor safe the appearance.

You Can’t Train Attitudes

It is easy to see how some risk managementprofess ionals could be f rus trated andconfused as to why their considerable effortsand investments in safety training,procedures and equipment have notachieved predicted or deserved outcomes.

To unravel the confusion, it is important tounderstand that the safety attitudes affectedby locus-of-control are not skills that aretrainable.

You cannot train other people’s attitudes, nomatter how well meaning. People’s attitudesand behaviours are motivated by their locus-of-control identity and define areas of theirlife well beyond the workplace.

A successful risk management strategyrequires that you do provide effect iveenvironmental safety strategies and trainingbut that you also must address the safetyattitudes of your workforce.

Attitudes Do Change!

Fortunately, attitudes do change. While it isvir tually impossible to train atti tudes ,especially in adults, it is certain that everyonehas the ability to evolve, enhance and modifytheir own attitudes.

Few adults would have all the same attitudesnow that they had when they were five orfifteen years old.

Most would agree that their attitude changewas the result of their personal experienceand acceptance in an environment thatreinforced and supported the change.

Developing safety attitudes and awarenessrequires an approach that is both specific toeach individual (coaching) and supported bythe work environment (safety culture).

For r isk management s trategies to beeffect ive they must be able to assess,identify and address the personal safetyawareness attitudes of its managers andemployees in an environment that iscommitted to achieving a permanent cultureof safety.

Risk Management’s New Frontier

The “new frontier” for risk management mustbuild on the discovery that human errorcauses can be predicted and eliminated.

A component of every risk managementstrategy and program must be the ability toassess and develop the personal safetyawareness of individuals and the safetyculture of an organization.

Fortunately, everybody has the ability todevelop their attitudinal safety awareness.

Proven attitude and behaviour change toolshave been developed by safetypsychologists to assist organizations toachieve workforces committed to safety.

Assessment tools and safety coachingprograms can address the root causes ofunsafe behaviour, the result of human error(poor judgment, misperception, fatigue, etc)and non-compliance (conf lic t, personalissues, lack of insight or maturity, etc).

Risk Management “Safety Awareness”Tools

There are FOUR areas where a businesscan reduce its incident and injury rates byadvancing the safety awareness thinkingand behaviour of i ts managers andemployees:

1 Recruiting or Selecting safetyfocused employees

2 Induction for new employees

3 Safety Culture Assessment

4 Evolving Safety Culture.

Tools such as these are the result of manyyears of research into the psychologicalfac tors that affec t safety thinking andmotivate safety behaviour.

Briefly outlined below, they provide the RiskManager with the means to identify andaddress human error potential of theirbusiness’ workforce.

ASA Coaching Continued

Put s imply, ASA provides a rat ional“attitudinal” context for drivers to makebetter safety related judgments and choices.

As an induction program, ASA has beenshown to be part icularly valuable tobusinesses where finding enough qualifiedand skilled employees is a challenge.

In Australia, ASA is part of a nationallyrecognized training course and has acompetency component. ASA is recognizedby many industries and used as an importantcomponent in their overall risk managementand employee development programs.

ASA Induction, prior to driving or operatingheavy vehicles or machinery, is the f irst,quickest and easiest step toward reducinghuman error and non-compliance accidentsand injuries with higher skilled employees(driver operators).

Ensuring personal safety awareness withASA at induction allows the focus to remainon skills at the point of recruitment.

3. OSCAOrganisational Safety Culture Assessment

One of the most valuable tools a RiskManager and their Insurer can have is anobjective assessment of the current safetyculture of the organization.

At the end of the day it is what the managersand employees “actually” think about safetythat will determine both their integrity andcommitment to following the prescribed riskmanagement protocols.

Lower safety awareness individuals andcultures are more likely to take shortcutswith risk management procedures ordismiss them easily as a low priority. Often,it is only a few individual elements of thesafety culture that negatively impact thewhole organization.

A Safety Culture Assessment provides theUnderwriter or Risk Manager with anobjective measure of the current level ofsafety awareness (covert attitudes andbehaviours) that can undermine a business’Risk Management strategy.

Safety Culture Assessments assist decisionmakers to:

n Obtain a current and transparentassessment and analysis of themanagers and employees attitudinalsafety awareness.

n Unders tand the human factorscontributing to their current business’safety performance.

n Target specific responsibility levels, riskareas and human error factorscontributing to incidents.

n· Provide an analysis and direction fortraining needs.

The f irs t bes t step toward enhancing,developing or modifying a business’ safetyculture is for it to know precisely where it isnow.

An independent and objective Safety CultureAssessment is the quickes t and mostefficient way of evolving any business’ safetyculture and performance to the next level.

4. Evolving Safety CulturesCompetency Based Training

Like living things, safety cultures are notmanufactured ... they are grown ... evolved.

A business’ safety culture is the sum of itspeople’s personality, values and behaviours- it is living and constantly changing butrequires focus and direction.

Any business can be assisted to develop thesafety awareness of its people and culturewith the unique assessments, coaching andtraining tools now available.

Managers and employees can be coachedand trained to develop their personal safetyawareness atti tudes , abili t ies andresponsibility.

A few are proven, competency based andhas achieved national recognition (Coursein Advanced Safety & Quality Awareness –Australia).

What is clear is that any business can nowevolve, and is best able to develop its ownsafety culture with the self-managingassessment and coaching tools nowavailable.

A safety culture is best driven from withinthe organization. After all, the culture is thereevery day! Every business can develop thesafety awareness of its people.

Evolving a safety aware culture is notdifficult - just different!

Developing safety awareness attitudes, assome have found, is not the same as trainingskills.

Achieving a safety culture is more analogousto professional team sport, where personalattributes are coached individually but withina framework of team identity and towardteam objectives.While every organization’sissues cannot be addressed in this summary,there are some important factors (people andoperations) to cons ider, ensuring thesuccessful implementation of your safetyculture strategy.

For 10 simple keys to building a safetyculture – please visit www.paqs.com.au

About PaQS

PaQS People and Quality Solutions Pty Ltd is a Strategic Partner and Preferred Supplier of global reinsurancecompanies of motor and transportation risk management.

A healthy safety culture is foremost people focused and characterized by individual personal responsibility,willing participation, professional pride, shared identity and a commitment to continuous improvement.

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