For Dysfunctional Practices: that kill your Safety Culture, Dr. Timothy Ludwig draws on his 30+ years of research and practice in behavioral approaches to safety to help managers re-shape their safety culture by driving out fear and risk and engaging their workforce.
Says Dr. Ludwig: "A MAN FINDS HIMSELF on the top step of a step ladder; a woman removes the guard to her machine; a worker is not wearing her safety glasses in the plant; a roustabout uses the wrong sized clamp instead of retrieving the right tool from the supply truck; a supervisor teaches a new worker to take short cuts; a mechanic climbs on top of the active machine to find the oil leak. Why do these folks do these things? Is it because they are stupid?
"One tendency is to blame workers for safety errors and label their personal failings as the cause of the error. Labeling does not solve problems that cause error and, frankly, it may all be an illusion of human perception leading us to false conclusions. Our human tendencies result in interactions that hurt the safety of our workers and the effectiveness of the systems we put in place to protect them."
Chapters include:
- You Can’t Fix Stupid
- Blaming the Worker
- The Fear Response
- Label the Behavior, not the Person
