We really do want to trust those lone wolves. OK, we do – honestly.
But you have to excuse us safety professionals if we act like helicopter parents or worrisome nannies when our lone-wolf workers, or “island laborers,” as I tend to call them, are on the job by themselves with no accountability and no supervisory eye on them.
Those who are out in the field working alone are usually seasoned workers who know what they are doing and how to do it right. This is why we trust them, or we want to. But they are also doing high-risk work (often why they work alone), which is why we worry so much.
The big key to workers being successful by themselves is that they have the character to be good self-managers, though that is more difficult than some may realize. My last post began summarizing an article written by Judy Agnew, Cloyd Hyten and Bart Sevin for a recent issue of Professional Safety magazine that discusses the phenomenon of lone-wolf or island laborers and the concept of self-management in establishing safety for those workers.
Challenges in Island Work
The previous post that walked us into this article, titled “Lone Worker Safety: Anchor Personal Values in Behavior-Based Self-Management,” talked about the challenges of lone-wolf workers in terms of safety. On the one hand, lone-wolf workers aare exactly that – they work alone, and thus are used to not having other people around. This means no one around to supervise, observe or monitor the work that is being done.
On the other hand, if the company were to have a supervisor stop by periodically to observe the worker, the presence of another person might cause the lone-wolf worker to adjust his or her normal behaviors and actions into compliance so as to not get negative reports. Sometimes it doesn’t matter whether the observation is announced ahead of time or if it’s a “surprise” observation. So it is a challenge to know whether these lone workers are really doing what they are supposed to do all the time.
Despite those worries, if a good self-management program and process is instilled, lone-wolf worker can and usually are trusted to be effective and efficient in working, but that isn’t to say thee process won’t be easy to implement if it hasn’t been implemented yet.
The Research Says …
While we can usually trust our “island laborers” to generally be and stay safe while on the job by themselves, there is about 30 years of research that seems to say that many workers who are alone are essentially fighting themselves in doing the right and safe thing. This seems to bring about the importance of a self-management program.
In the research, the overall consensus is that island laborers tend to fight against habits that would heighten their risk of harm; they tend to not learn new skills easily, as they have no guidance or mentoring while on the job; and they tend to be tempted to save time and effort with certain tasks by working around the safe behaviors and cutting corners on occasion.
Knowing Self
Two of the keys to being safe while on an island during a shift is self-knowledge and the ability to be self-observant. Self-management is a process that includes tools to allow a lone-wolf worker to be able to objectively observe himself, his behaviors and actions and have the self-knowledge to understand the thoughts and emotions that compel his behaviors and actions.
With that as our launch point, we’ll take the next post to look into a key ingredient in proper self-management: values. A good worker will have a good value system, and a self-management program can be developed around those values so that each individual worker can have buy-in to safety and be self-accountable. And that is the secret to safe work by those on an island.