Page 32 - OHS, October 2021

SAFETY CULTURE
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Dusan Petkovic/Shutterstock.com
Production pressures are common in construction. It is easy to see the normalization of deviance taking root. If a worker needs to use a stepladder to perform a task, but one long enough
is not readily available, the worker is faced with a choice to take the time to find a longer one and possibly fail to meet the production goal or use the shorter one and get the job done. If the supervisor
stresses production goals and the worker feels that his or her job might be in jeopardy, the logical choice will be to use the shorter ladder and meet the
production goal.
If the worker chooses to bring up the lack of
proper equipment being available for the task, the supervisor is also faced with a choice of accepting a delay or reduction in production while the appropriate equipment is secured or asking the
worker to make do with what they have and get the job done. Underlying this decision is the knowledge that work has been successfully completed in the past with less-than-optimal equipment or procedures with little
or no adverse effect.
In order to solve the immediate conundrum, the
supervisor may ask the worker to proceed anyway but to be extra careful. The worker does so successfully. The next day, they still do not have longer ladders, and the worker proceeds working on the top step of the shorter
ladder. After a few days, the worker does not even think about the safety coordinator’s admonitions. Working this way becomes accepted practice, and the deviation
becomes normal practice.
The schedule is a powerful driver of production.
When supervisors succeed in overcoming barriers through deviations from “good” work practices without adverse effects, they reinforce the use of performance
discrepancies and deviant practices. After repeating this a few times, solving performance pressures by deviation becomes institutionalized, forming a culture of production, which leads to acceptance of deviations from good work
practices. Therefore, the reasons for a future failure conforms to accepted deviant practices, and the prevailing unsafe work culture rather than the violation of the original “good”
performance standards.
Examples and Explanations
In work situations, a manager makes a wrong judgment call, a supervisor makes a miscalculation, or a worker takes a risk or ignores a safety rule, with no major consequence. Later,
another situation arises that can be resolved with the same improper approach, and eventually it becomes easy to repeat the improper action because it seems to work and solves the immediate problem. That approach becomes the accepted way
to deal with similar situations going forward. Not only is the
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