Page 33 - OHS, October 2021

deviation normalized, but it becomes the “new” normal and the accepted way to do things.
Following are a few examples of reasons why there are normal deviations from standard practices in organizations:
When achieving production goals is stressed and safety rules ignored, workers come to believe that how they are going about doing their jobs is in fact in the organization’s best interest. This justification of deviation reinforces the perception that safety rules are counterproductive and breaking them is actually beneficial.
Depending on the work climate or the perception of the workers of expectations and consequences, they may be afraid to speak up or point out barriers to performance, such as unreasonable expectations, insufficient time, deficient resources, or any other impediment to getting the job done. This leads to deviation from standards using inappropriate behavior. Repeated success increases the likelihood that rules will be violated and will eventually become normalized.
Changing the Culture
Reversing the normalization of deviance is difficult unless there is a structural change in the organization. This is not easy to do, as it is the culture and work climate that allows these deviations to occur and become accepted. According to James Reason, a poor safety culture has three overriding factors:
1. Normalization of deviance is discussed at length above.
2. Complacency results in accepting risk or underestimating the exposure of the act due to past experience. Complacency turns people into observers or passive participants rather than actively contributing stakeholders.
3. Tolerance of inadequate systems has numerous fundamental cultural, leadership and organizational causes, which will be addressed in a future article.
Conclusion
Organizations generally have an expected “conduct of operations.” This is how they would ideally want to operate. This may involve meeting or beating the project schedule and/or budget, operating at a high level of efficiency, meeting or exceeding expectations, treating partners fairly and operating ethically while being profitable. In short, “conduct of operations” represents a system of policies, practices and procedures that ensure requirements are being met. Unfortunately, no organization is immune to the normalization of deviance, regardless of how robust its conduct of operations system may be. People erroneously come to believe that a minor departure from defined procedures is acceptable, when in fact they have started down the road that eventually will result in some sort of catastrophe.
Peter Furst is the Organizational & Human Performance Consultant at The Furst Group.
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