When people mention safety, they are often really talking about risk. In a similar way, people talk about the absurdity of ‘elf ‘n’ safety when they actually mean public liability or food safety or HACCP. And when some professionals talk about risk management they mean minimising the cost to the employer or controlling reputational damage.
Recently two books were released that illustrate the limitations of the current Western/patriarchal society’s approach to workplace safety. Dr Dean Laplonge has written about gender and its role in making decisions and Dr Rob Long has written his third book on risk “Real Risk – Human Discerning and Risk“. Both deserve close reading and that reading should be used to analyse how safety professionals conduct their work, the organisational environment in which they work and the cultural restrictions imposed in their technical education.
Laplonge has written a book out of the extensive research and training on gender issues in the mining industry. “So you think you’re tough? – Getting serious about gender in mining” provokes thoughts and self-analysis about gender in the workplace and safety management systems. This perspective may be part of the reason that attempts at changing safety cultures, particularly in industries where there is a strong gender imbalance – construction, mining, emergency services, nursing, teaching, struggle. (For those who cannot purchase the book, check out this free publication on the topic from the WA Department of Mines and Petroleum)
Laplonge argues convincingly that the success of the Women’s Movement in the 1960s and 1970s has caused gender to be seen as almost exclusively a female issue. This compartmentalisation has allowed patriarchal company structures to ignore the fundamental concepts of fairness and equality as can be seen in the ongoing campaigns for equal pay, equal rights and fair work. Laplonge believes that this compartmentalisation has limited the development of safety cultures in some, male-dominated, industries.
He also discusses the need for men and women to change their personalities to fit in to a workplace or industry sector when it should be those industries and work practices that change to accommodate the needs of workers, regardless of gender. He mentions on page 31
“The acronym FIFO normally refers to “fly-in-fly-out”. but “fit in or fuck off” is a more colloquial definition, now proudly displayed on T-shirts worn by people who like the mining culture as it is. The fact that such a definition even exists shows that the mining industry has a problem with people who are not of a particular type.”
The problem is not with the people coming to work but the workplace culture they are coming to.
In Laplonge’s chapter “Guidelines for Gender and Safety” he recommends that, after gender awareness training, one should ask the following questions:
- “What is it about being a man that might encourage a person to take a risk?
- Why might women equally be encouraged to take the same risk?
- What happens to the man who does not take a risk? (Think about this in the context of what is defined as good masculinity and not in terms of rewards we might claim he gets as a result of acting safely at work)
- Similarly, what about the woman who works in a masculine environment – what are the possible responses to her if she does not take a risk?
- In what ways might our workplace or work culture encourage a person to take a risk so they can be seen to performing a particular gender?” (Pages 106-7)
This gender approach to safety is not overtly stated in Dr Rob Long’s latest work as Long talks primarily of humanity rather than men and women but there is sufficient information in Long’s book for gender analysis. Long’s two case studies of risk takers, Jessica Watson and Dick Smith, could have benefited from a discussion of how our gender-fixed culture treats different approaches to risk between men and women. Long discusses the media’s dismissive treatment of Watson’s attempts to sail round the world in which one can see a strong gender element. Given that media is the principal way adults learn about risk, safety and hazards, an analysis of how media reflects and encourages a certain approach to risk and the gender underpinnings would be valuable.
Long’s book is the latest in a series of books, training, and seminars that challenges some of the fundamental tenets of how occupational health and safety (OHS) is taught. He downplays the history of OHS theory that is based on various pyramids and dominoes to ensure that information is relevant. At a recent launch of the “Real Risk” book , it was noted that tertiary OHS courses continue to teach theories that have been proven to be false. This, and other issues, has put Dr Long on the outer of Australia’s OHS profession but sometimes one can learn more from heretics that from the establishment.
Where Long most succeeds is in providing a strategic model for corporate maturity that allows companies to self assess their position from the pathological to the generative. Some of this comes from the work of Patrick Hudson but Long is able to present corporate maturity as achievable and links our understanding of risk to real world scenarios, often otherwise mundane scenarios.
Long’s approach is gaining traction in Australian management circles for several reasons.
- It places behaviour-based approaches to safety as one of the middle steps of the journey rather than as the solution to all safety problems, as many zealots claim.
- It roots the management of safety and risk within the greater organisational decision-making processes. Safety and risk are seen as integral rather than nuisance impositions.
- It allows companies to place their cultural assessments and surveys in an organisational and strategic context rather than as a managerial obligation that no one knows what to do with.
Long’s strategy could benefit from a broader understanding of the role of gender in the workplace but this is perhaps one of those areas where students can help polish or expand a theory.
Both of these new books are useful tools in the journey to understand workplace safety and why it isn’t working as well as it could. Could an outdated understanding of gender be lurking behind some of the decision-making that impedes organisational growth? Could the corporate focus on work health and safety be more palatable and effective if one talks about safety in the context of risk decisions? Could each of these approaches add value to a company’s corporate/safety culture survey?
Everybody needs to learn and the recent works of Laplonge and Long present important perspectives that should be carefully considered when planning a workplace safety strategy, trying to find out why a strategy is not working or just trying to understand the world of work in which we operate.
Tagged: Dr Dean Laplonge, gender issues, OHS, safety management systems, workplace safety
