There is a saying in counterterrorism: Terrorists only have to be right once; we have to be right every time.

That similar sentiment can be expressed for those who are in the business of assessing risk at a workplace. IN other words, hazards only have to impact a worker once, while safety officers have to be right with their safety program every time.

Safety of workers and in the workplace is extremely vital for the interests of a company and with the workers themselves. But much like other professions like in medicine and psychology – safety does not have any scientific answers for assessing risks. In other words, not all professionals in the field will agree.

And then when you throw in feedback and opinion from those who are not embedded in the safety profession but are concerned about workers or the bottom line of the company, you can literally have too many cooks in the kitchen.  And what happens in that case? Everyone gets burned.

We are all human; of couse we’ll have disagreements and differences in perspective and perception of the very same scenario. But what happens when you disagree in a safety scenario, where you are trying to assess risk, hazards, and develop mitigation and control of those hazards?

Well, there you have a razor’s edge balancing act.

Vladimir Ivensky published an article in Professional Safety magazine that addresses the razor’s edge and the importance of understanding the dangers that can come from disagreements about risks and hazards at a worksite.  His article, titled “Safety Program Support Outcomes,” takes a look at disagreements in risk assessment and the potential dangers when there isn’t a consensus.

We’ll spend a few posts dissecting this interesting article, but we will start by introducing you to Ivensky’s assertion that the basic safety scenarios and corresponding reactions could be placed in a grid with two central axes – one for hazard and one for control. This grid is then divided into four quadrannts as follows, using the formula of risk=hazard/control:

  • Low hazard/high control (bottom right quadrant): A scenario where there is a low-level hazard but a high level of safety control can be perceived as annoying to workers, and too much paperwork and attention by safety officers and supervisors. This could be the “broken window policy,” but you may have too much attention being paid in areas where resources aren’t needed as much. when this happens you often get less support fo the safety program from workers, which are your most vital buy-in constituency.
  • Low hazard/low control (bottom left quadrant): When safety conttrols are more lax in an area where there is less hazard, you might have a compliant program that is generally resource-neutral, but you also may run the risk of workers cutting corners from time to time, or supervisors encouraging or looking the other way about shortcuts, which may increase risks. Note this is “low” control, not “no” control.
  • High hazard/low control (upper left quadrant):  This is the area where there can be significant fear and no support of a safety program that does not seem to be geared toward protecting workers and is more of a de minimis attempt at “due diligence” while taking cost-saving measures. Very few, if any, workers would support a safety program that puts them in daily danger by consistently exposing them to hazards.
  • High hazard/high control (upper right quadrant): This is where the most support for your safety program generally comes from. When you have workers in a high-hazard or high-risk environment, they are more likely to work with confidence when they know the company has invested in safety protocols that can and do mitigate as many of the risks as possible. Workers know that in a high hazard aarea there will always be risks and they can’t all be eliminated, but if they know that the company is taking safety as a priority, that lifts morale and leaves workers with less fear and more resolve to do the right things to keep themselves and safe and promote safety throughout the organization.

The big part of Ivensky’s article evaluates the differences in risk perceptions, which of course can vary depending on the person doing the assessment. After all, one person could see risk in one quadrant, which another person will see it in an opposite quadrant. We’ll begin our deep dive into this in the next post on Friday.