Safety Speaker Insight – The Absence of Intervention Is Approval

Safety Speaker Insight – The Absence of Intervention Is Approval

When you see someone doing something unsafe and choose not to say something you are actually part of a very dangerous process called normalization of deviance. As a safety speaker, I am familiar with the concept and it’s classic example the  Space Shuttle Challenger Disaster. Just 70 seconds into the flight, the space shuttle was destroyed in a massive explosion. The crew of seven astronauts perished when what was left of the spacecraft hit the water.

The failure was the solid rocket booster O-ring, which allowed heat and gasses to break though and continue burning. Sadly, this burn-through had happened to a lesser degree on over ten different flights. Because nothing major had happened, it slowly became an acceptable condition. It wasn’t the way the O-rings of the solid rocket booster were supposed to work. The repeated minor failures made their less than optimum performance seem acceptable. Each launch re-affirmed the failing O-ring design was OK to go on with until a very cold day on January 28th, 1986. Among the seven astronauts was an employee of my father at Hughes Aircraft in El Segundo, California. Greg Jarvis was the second civilian on board that day.

As a safety speaker almost every example I have heard of normalization of deviance deals with conditions. Recently, when serving as a safety speaker for Dynegy, a speaker ahead of me referred to people’s actions and normalization of deviance. He pointed out when you or I see an unsafe behavior and we choose not to say something we are giving our approval to that action or behavior.

I used to think this was most significant when a supervisor observed less than the safest behavior and chose not to intervene. After all, if they see the behavior and the employee knows they have seen it, then if they say nothing, they have given company approval for that action. That unintentional event is the equivalent of making that behavior company policy.

What I am now aware of as a safety speaker is that fellow employees seeing an unsafe action and not saying something may be more significant. We know peer pressure is a major driving force. Since we know our peers strongly influence us it makes sense that if they approve by their silence, they are confirming it’s OK with them. The deviant behavior has become normalized within this group of people.

Be sure to share this with employees. Let them know that not saying something undermines everything we are trying to accomplish in safety. Before you know it no one is doing the safe action.

Ignoring conditions can set people up for an injury and ignoring unsafe actions can do the same.

In the presentation I referred to, the speaker had one slide that unintentionally made a great point. His slide was supposed to read, “Normalization of Deviant Behavior.” What the slide actually said was, “Normalization of Defiant behavior.” It’s true that failure to point out unsafe actions can in fact lead to normalization of Defiant behavior.

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Until next week,
I’ll be, “Watching Out For Everyone’s Safety™”
Safety Speaker John Drebinger
© 2017 John Drebinger Presentations
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