Presented by: Mark Taylor, Safety Matters at OHSIG 2014, Wednesday 10/9/14, Limelight Room 1, 1.15pm

1. What’s today’s presentation all about?
Well its not just about the skills required to sell a safety message, but essentially about how to create a culture, so that safety can be seen in a positive light rather than one which focuses on compliance and blaming people when things go wrong.
It is designed not to force people to use the techniques which will be covered, but to make people think about the alternatives that are currently being used collect, collate, monitor and measure safety performance today.
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2. Is your company safe?
And, if so how safe is it?
Also, areyour safety systems authentic, and more importantly do the workers believethey’re authentic?
Is it causing them pain or pleasure (is it similar to going to the dentist)?
And, if it’s causing them pain, why aren’t we trying to fix it?
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3. Here is a survey undertaken showing the value of professionalsin society.
The numbers show the percentage of votes per occupation.
I don’t know the population of the survey or if it’s accurate, but lets assume it a true representation of society.
You might expect to see the surgeons, doctors and teachers at the top of the table, but why do the safety inspectors only get 7% of the total vote?
After all we are the ones who prevent lives from being lost, the surgeons are only there to save them after the event has taken place!
If we really want to engage better with our peers and the workforce, perhaps we need to change our image, so that people see safety in a positive light. So that they come to us seeking help instead of waving the big stick at them. 3

4. Take a look at thefollowing Dilbert cartoon
Does it seem familiar?
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5. Have we beenburdened by bureaucracy? Most workers will tell you so!
Have our procedures become the albatrosses around the neck of business as David Cameron puts it?
Do non health and safety people see the primary reason for our procedures defense litigation and secondary to prevent injury and ill health?
Will the systems and procedures that we are in the process of introducing be even more onerous than before?
Will they lead people to believe that safety professionals are just a necessary evil?
And, will they stifle innovation and creativity (something that Kiwi’s thrive on).
Will we be paralyzed by our own protection?
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6. This is aphoto of a safety briefing that has become common place in many organizations.
Let’s delve a little deeper into the picture, what can you see?
How many people are activelylistening to the speaker?
Are verbal communications the best way of conveying a safety message?
What systems do you utilize to impart safety knowledge?
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7. People use a range of different techniquesto learn and this varies from personto person.
Some prefer verbal, others prefer audio and most blue collar workers prefer kinesthetic (hands-on) learning.
However, to retain the data we receive, it has been proven that certain types of learning stick in our memory longer than others and this diagram represents which ones are best.
We need to regularly change the format to suit the range of people attending and ensure that we assess the ability incrementally during the training.
We have found this works extremely well in our college courses and some of the school teachers are now adopting our techniques.
We achieve this using a range of fun activities and games which capture the imagination of the students.
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Is everyonehere familiar with James Reason Swiss Cheese Model of accident causation?
Each slice of cheese represents a latent condition which should prevent an accident from happening.
However, within each slice of cheese there are holes which represent a breakdown in the systems, which when aligned lead to a loss or accident.
The problem is, when we go looking for the errors in the system they become very difficult to find.
Why, because people believe that we are looking for someone to blame and collude to cover up the truth.
And, this process no matter how we brand it or sell it, always seems to focus on the negatives rather than the positives which people try and avoid.

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What aboutif we look a the cheese from as different perspective and look at what’s good inside the cheese, instead of focusing on what’s bad?
Whenan accident occurs, why don’t we also seek outthose people who have never had accidents and find out why (positives)?
Find out what they are doing differently and see if what they are doing is right and can be adopted by the people who had the accidents.
Perhaps, we need to change the focus from a negative based investigation process, to one which fosters the truth from positive reflected learning.

10. Safety is universal, but perhaps one common system isn’t suitable and shouldn’t be adopted for everyone.
It’s time to recognize that current compliance based systems will only get us so far, and that we need to change the focus to something that is more appealing to concentrate more on human factors which have the most impact?
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11. Takea look at this picture taken from an experiment run by Foot and Thomson.
It shows some deaf people walking across a railway track and a runaway trolley advancing towards them.
The runaway train is moving so fast that it will either hit one person or five people depending on which track it will take.
You are able to pull the lever and divert the train to the left or right track
Which way do you divert the points?
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12. Now havea look at this scenario isa bit different to the last one.
In this situation there is only one track with 5 deaf people on it and another runaway trolley is advancing towards them.
This time your standing on a footbridge directly above the track and standing next to you is a very large person.
The only way to prevent the trolley from hitting the people on the track is to throw the man off the bridge, would you do it to save the five people?
If not, why not?
It’s the same end result after all?
In a study 23% of the population said they would throw the person off the bridge to save the other five.
The moral of the story is that we sometimes make snap decisions without thinking and mostly they are good ones.
However, we sometimes make bad ones and have to face the consequences.
The way to prevent these from happening is to divert people’s actions from automatic decisions to ones that a driven by cognitive deliberation and I will be covering this shortly.
Let’s look at one more scenario.
Imagine that you were 50m away from the footbridge and could control a switch that released a trap door underneath the man.
Would you flick the switch to release the man?
In this follow-up study 53% of the population said they would press the switch, why?
Because the pushing carries far more emotion than flicking the switch, it becomes far more personal.
What has this got to do with safety, well the more you push people into doing something they don’t like the more they will resist it.
To get them to buy into safety we need to find the right switches for them to flick!
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13. Oneof our clients in Oamaru, carried out a similar exercise to the one you’ve just undertaken, but this time with Myers Briggs model. They ask all of their employees to complete a personality test and then compared the profiles with 4 years of accidents stats and the results were very interesting.
If you’re not familiar with the Myers Briggs model, it asks you to choose between two possible options
Are you more extroverted than introverted?
More intuitive or sensing
More of a thinking person than a feeling person
Do you tend to judge people or perceive what could be wrong? 13

14. We then utilize Keirsey’s temperament sorter to correlate a person personality type with one of 16 variants.
If you have a TJin your profile type your classified as a “Guardian”
If you have a NFyou’re an “Idealist”
If you have a NTyou’re a “Rational”
And, if you have an SPyou’re an “Artisan”
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16. Imagine you’ve agreed to take part in a memoryexperiment
Your in a bare room sitting at a table and a scientist enters wearing a white lab coat. The scientist asks you to remember a 7 figure number and asks you to walk down a long hallway to another room where the memory test will begin. On the way to the room you pass a refreshments table for participants taking part in the experiment. You get a choice of a slice of chocolate cake or a bowl of fruit salad, which one do you take?
Now lets replay the experiment, but this time you are asked to remember just a 2 digit number (a far easier task). Will the number of digits affect your decision?
The answer is yes 59% of the people trying to remember the 7 digit number choose the cake, compared to only 37% for the fruit salad
This study and lots of others proves that a few additional digits can be a handicap to memory and lead to poor decisions
Working memory and rationality share a common source the prefrontal cortex and it can only remember a few things in succession
So when we engage in communication its important that we use clear and concise information
Other studies have shown that a drop in blood sugar levels can also inhibit self control because the PFC requires a lot of energy to work effectively.
So the best time to communicate with people is after they’ve had something to eat.
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17. Our brainshave been designed to operate in two distinct ways.
Our fast or hare or emotional brains work instinctively carrying out jobs without thinking. It often uses unconscious patterns like a plane on autopilot.
The majority of the time the hare brain gets things right and we don’t suffer from the occasional near miss that might happen on the way.
However, when the environment suddenly changes or when things don’t go to plan, sometimes the hare brain makes instinctive decisions that leave us in big trouble.
This is the time when we need our manual slow mode, or tortoise brain to kick-into action.
Our tortoise brain is more methodical than the hare brain and takes time out to think about decisions before making a final decision.
The key then, is knowing when to switch from hare to tortoise and back to hare during our working day.
It’s rather like deciding when to switch from automatic to manual when towing a heavy boat.
When the going gets tough (climbing up a steep hill) you need to switch to give the vehicle some more grunt (you need to spend some additional energy or brain power to solve the problem.
And, the other thing we need to consider is how we plan for the possible disruptions and if possible, trigger our brains to take time out to think?
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Recency effect –You rememberthe last words spoken first
Primacy effect –then you remember the firstthings first
Duplication –you remember things that are regularly and consistently spoken
Biases –filling in the gaps based on hunches and past behaviour.

19. Wouldanyone hear like to explain how your company undertakes near miss reporting?
Forgive me if I’m wrong, but most companies treatit through the use of trend analysis. We ask the workers to report all the near misses that they witness and endeavor to convince them that they won’t be reprimanded for doing so.
We then upload the data into a master database (or spreadsheet) which then allows us to interpret the results.
The usual outcome is one which spots a significant hazard or trend for which we try to mitigate the risk.
This often takes the form of a safety briefing, notice or exercise where we try and get everyone to be more diligent and put their PPE on.
What this fails to do, is identify who are taking the risks and what actions or omissions they are taking which put them in danger. 19

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How about usingthis strategy instead?
Firstly, get the workers to write down what they perceive as the biggest risk, because they’re the ones that know and understand the key dangers
Then drill down and put them in order of importance.
Target the key influencer and get them on board
Next, shift from a philosophy which looks for quick fixes to one of creativity, diversity and long term planning.
Match up roles and responsibilities which suit individuals or similar groups of people (SCATS)

21. We believethat there is currently an imbalance in current health and safety regimes, which focus far more on compliance (negatives) rather than allowing people to be creative (positives).
Clearly allowing Kiwi’s to adopt No.8 wire methods to solve problems isn’t the way forward, but stifling their creativity through bureaucracy isn’t good either.
We therefore need a balancewhich uses simple but effective procedures combined with a controlled process allowing people to come up with new innovate ideas.
We also need to be mindful that expressive and sensory people might make choices that actually increase risk instead of reducing them
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If you bought a $15calculator with a $20 bill and drove 20 minutes home before realising you’d forgotten the change, would you drive back to retrieve the money?
In a study, 68%of respondents said they would travel the 20min drive to save $5 on a $15 calculator
However in a similar study where the calculator was substituted for a $125 leather jacket, only 29% of people said they would drive 20min to save $5
Why is that?
Because, instead of counting every $5 dollars we spend we parcel them into particular purchases instead of thinking of the final outcome.
We rely on misleading shortcuts (cognitive biases) because we lack computing power at the prefrontal cortex.
Therefore to build a safety culture or engage people effectively, we have to start with a small insight and let it grow symbiotically (just like a culture on a Petri dish) from the inside out.

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If we need tocreate time to allow people moretime to think about safety, we must find quicker and more effective methods to communicate the information.
I believe there are many solutions out there and one of them is utilizing the thousands of apps that are available on electronic devices today, most of them which are free or less than $5.
During my speech on Friday, I will be covering some of these which I believe will make your life a whole lot easier and allow for some back end analysis to predict future risks.

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What I’d liketo do today, is to get you to develop at simple app using pictograms and I’ve got a little exercise for you to complete at your tables.
But firsthave a look at the pictorialrepresentation of a common procedure on the slide.
Would anyone like to suggest what it’s for and what the pictures tell you?
Now I’d like you to do is to build your own pictorial app out of the icons you have on your table.
The procedure you devise doesn’t have to be a safety one and you’ve got 10 minutes to build it.
Afterwards Cathryn is going to stream your some of your ideas on the screen to see if they make nay sense?
Do you think that this concept could work for you?
Do you have any workers with poor literary skills that have difficulty reading or understanding English?
If you do, please email me or contact me afterwards?

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To be an effective communicator I’m suggesting that you put yourself in neutral mode, because neutral is where the true power is.
If you compare safety communication like parts of an atom, the information is communicated by the electrons and a lot of the time its is circumstantial and negative (just like the electrons negative force).
All the positive ideas and information are held at the centre in the nucleus and very rarely come out and get discussed
This is partly because of the limited time we allow people to think, but it’s also because humans are very opinionated people and want their decisions to be proven right and safety people are no different
However, if we want to be effective at communication and engagement, the best thing to do is to act neutral and impartial by bonding ourselves to the protons (positives) in the nucleus.
We need to be more of a conduit to the discussion and only voice our opinions after people have had their say

26. Howdo you measure and celebrate safety performance?
I believe we’vebecome fixatedby numbers –wages, FaceBook, BMI’s, LTI’s
It easy to give out a bonus, but it takes considerable effort patience to develop self-control and the commitment to behave responsibly
The more people are rewarded the more it becomes expected
Insteadof giving out large bonuses when we meet significant goals, all we need to do is regularly pat people on the back and instill confidence particularly in their time of need.
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27. AlfieKohn gives some alternatives to rewards and I particularly like the 3 C’s approach for safety
If you have to celebrate, do it in teams and celebrate the start of the journey to success not the result at the end.
And , when people do slip up, say “We gave it our best shot and we know we can do it better next time.”
Be contentwith a pat on the back; and keep the contentsimple
Get people to make the right choices not only helping themselves, but ones that ultimately benefit the team
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Has anyone watched a Ted Talkon YouTube?
Ted Talks show how some of the world’s greatest thinkers sell their stories.
In his book “Talk like Ted”, Carmine Gallo suggests that there are a few key factors which people should adopt when trying to sell a message.
•Usea real story and one that has a good moral outcome
•Add something that is novel or new and creates interest
•Add some humor, make safety enjoyable
•Try and get people to use as many of their senses as possible (sight, touch, hearing, smell and taste)
•Be normal (always be yourself), don’t use Gimmicks or things that cannot be proven or backed up by science.

29. Hasanyone heard of the prisoners dilemma
Imagine that there has been an armed robbery and two suspects are taken to the police station for interrogation.
The police have enough to convict them for robbery, but can’t find the firearms to prosecute them for the higher charge
How do the interrogator's get them to confess?
They interview them separately and offer them a lesser charge if they speak up.
However, if the prisoner’s have a strong bond and collude beforehand they might decide to keep quiet and accept the charges hoping that the judge might be lenient on the day.
In the example above, if prisoner “A” remains silent whilst prisoner “B” confesses, A gets 20 years and B walks away a free man ( visa versa)
If they both confess they both get 5 years
And, if both remain silent they both get 1 year.
I believe the last scenario is very common in an accident investigation, because people perceive that they will be blamed.
How many accident investigations have you done where you can be 100% sure that you’ve uncovered all the facts and no exactly what’s happened?
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30. Iwould like to offer you an alternative model to the one we’ve just talked about that I call the Magic Safety Corner which is synonymous with the inside the cheese model mentioned earlier
Again we have two people that know about a potential problem that has caused an incident or could lead to an incident happening in the future.
However,on this occasion were not trying to punish something for what went wrong but trying to praise them for speaking up.
This time we’ve put names to the people involved, but this doesn’t have to be individuals it could be two teams
If Bill speaks up and Fred doesn’t, Bill receives a pat on the back (5 Pts) where as Fred gets no attention (0 Pts) and visa versa
If the both speak up, they both get a pat on the back 5 pts
Even better, if one or both of them come up with a viable solution they both get 10 pts.
Better still if either or both of them fix the solution within a given timescale they gain a further 15 pts.
The points aren’t linked to a reward as such, but have an impact on the annual performance reviews, so have a significant bearing.
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31. In factwe have used this model as a positive engagement KPI for individual and group related performance.
This chart is the outcome of one persons results that have been captured by a $3 cell phone application which I’m demonstrating on Friday
The chart shows and average of the results captured for one person, but can capture team related performance as well.
It shows Graham is more happy discussing and resolving issues most of the time, but certain jobs such as manual handling and mechanical plant he finds difficulty talking about.
Perhaps Graham is new to those tasks and needs some help?
Its often good practice to compare the results with accident and health stats to see if there’s a common link?
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Cananyone be a safety rep? Yes
Are some safety reps better than others? Yes
Then why don’t we have a criteria for selecting and appointing them, like any other role/job?
What criteria would be useful when choosing the right candidate for the job? Experience, communication skills, intuitive thinker?
Let me offer an alternative to the safetyrep, which we call the Team Advocate.
TheTeam Advocate is a weekly role assigned to an individual member of a team. The nominated person is given the responsibility of being the voice of safety for their specific area team. It is the Advocates responsibility, to have a heightened awareness of the teams’ wellbeing during the week. And, the Advocate wears a unique vest that carries simple reminder messages which provides a constant reminder of “safety first” to the rest of the team during the working day.
The advocate is not responsible for the safety of their team, but a conduit for receiving information and suggestions for improving safety systems and disseminating it within the team at a daily briefing (often a slack period during the day).
Afterthe daily briefing the advocate passes the vest on to a different person to be the incumbent for the following week.