What Stops Workers from Saying Something When They See Something Unsafe?

Every day, facility managers have their hands full juggling their day-to-day duties, not to mention putting out proverbial fires, so they need to trust that their team members or other workers at their organizations will notify them of unsafe conditions in their buildings. Far too often, however, people witness actions or conditions in the facility that they know are unsafe at best—and potentially disastrous at worst— that could almost certainly be stopped, but they don’t voice their concerns. What inhibits people in these situations? Why do they so often stay silent?

Phillip Ragain of the RAD Group explored this cognitive phenomenon, which he refers to as “Hardwired Inhibitions.” According to Ragain, research indicates that when they see something they think is unsafe, people speak up only about 39% of the time. More amazing, this number accounts for variables that extend across different industries, countries, and cultures. Obviously, this is not enough.

Stop Work Authority and the Context Effect

EHS professionals had hope that granting stop work authority without fear of retaliation will encourage employees to say something when they witness an unsafe situations occurring at their facilities. Ragain notes, however, that this step has not helped —97% of workers in the study said that they were given the authority to stop work at their company, but the 39% rate of stepping in to correct the situation still held fast.

The problem with stop work authority is that it only addresses one of many factors, said Ragain, and that is the fear of formal punishment for perceived insubordination or slowing of productivity. The thing is, plenty of informal punishments exist, exerting unseen pressure on workers in any given facility; people might be ostracized by coworkers or overlooked for new opportunities by their supervisors, among other types of retaliation. In essence, the “authority” in stop work authority is an illusion, explained Ragain.

Despite these fears regarding safety “interventions,” most workers do take this responsibility very seriously, and they believe that they would speak up. But in the moment, they usually say nothing. Why?

It has a great deal to do with something called the “Context Effect.” Basically, this effect results from an innate tendency that what we think about, care about, and remember is determined by our immediate context. When presenting on the topic at conferences, Ragain will ask for a volunteer in the audience, and show them an image with two colors, white and black. The verbal exchange usually shakes out like this:

“Okay, what color is this?”

“White.”

“Good. And this one?”

“Black.”

“Yes. And this?”

“White.”

“And this?”

“Black.”

“This one again?”

“White.”

“Great. And this one?”

“Black.”

“Yes. What do cows drink?”

“Milk.”

“Thank you.”

Of course, cows do not drink milk. They drink water. However, given the context of the conversation, the volunteer instinctively said something that he knew intellectually to be false. It’s a cognitive trick, explained Ragain, one that is put to good use by salesmen and waiters who use context to put customers in an empathic state in order to make them more likely to buy or order a particular item.

So, what does this have to do with calling out unsafe conditions in a facility? The operational context is very different from the context of a safety meeting, said Ragain. They shape and affect decisions in different ways, and while workers will say in a safety meeting without doubt or hesitation that they would speak up against something unsafe, it could end up being a different story during the day-to-day workflow in any given building.

Other Inhibiting Forces

Beyond the “Context Effect,” there are multiple other cognitive forces at work that can prevent workers from voicing safety or security concerns. Ragain detailed four in particular that are especially powerful in a work situation.

1. Production pressure. It literally changes the way we see the world, said Ragain. It narrows focus, makes you tense, and everything not related to what you need to get done fades into the background and loses significance.
2. Unit bias. To a cognitive psychologist, “bias” is a filter that makes us perceive reality differently, and unit bias refers to the fact that people are strongly inclined to finish a given unit or task before changing what they are doing. Consider the example of a manufacturing manager who says “I’ll be right there,” and finishes a relatively unimportant e-mail before going to the line when a safety issue occurs. With unit bias, workers have seen something unsafe but they just want to finish the current task in front of them before saying something, said Ragain.
3. Deference to authority. We don’t always speak up to authorities … or in the presence of authorities, noted Ragain. If an authority asks you to do something wrong or to ignore something that is wrong, people defer responsibility to that authority figure.
4. The Bystander Effect. Simply put, the more people there are, the less likely we are to speak up, said Ragain. In one study, 70% of participants, individually, would help an old lady who fell; however, if only one other person is around when the lady falls, this percentage drops to only 7%. We assume other people will help (or, in the case of safety interventions, will speak up)—it’s called diffusion of responsibility.

A Perfect Storm

If your systems and management are phenomenal, there’s a chance that the four factors above don’t present an issue at your facility. But even without these factors in play, there is something more ingrained that can keep us silent in the face of disaster, said Ragain, and that is the perfect storm of reactance, social incongruence, and confirmation bias.

• Reactance is the natural urge to resist or do the opposite of what someone tells you to do. It’s the human need for exercising autonomy and independence, explained Ragain. When someone in a facility speaks up against an unsafe action, it can trigger reactance or defensiveness in the other worker performing the unsafe action. Research shows that across industries, 28% of “offending” workers become defensive in these situations, and 1 in 6 actually become angry.
• Social incongruence is the stress people feel when they are in tension with others. To be human is to be social, which requires connections with those around us, noted Ragain, and the tension that could result from speaking up is profound. We’re wired to get away from that feeling.
• Confirmation bias is evidenced by the fact that people are extremely good at justifying what they have already concluded. We can rationalize anything by paying attention to things we want to believe and discarding everything to the contrary, said Ragain. Good examples of thought processes rooted in confirmation bias include, “No one else has said anything, so it must not be that big of a deal,” or “It won’t make a difference if I speak up.”

What Can Be Done?

In the face of all of these cognitive forces and innate social tendencies we share as human beings, facility professionals want to know what can be done to address unsafe conditions in their buildings. Can we be rewired to say something when we see something?

There are two steps in particular that can help improve the situation, said Ragain.

1. Simply be aware of these biases, and provide your employees with awareness of them as well. Being aware of these biases and inhibiting factors allows us to overcome them.
2. Build a culture where workers are confident that they can speak up without producing defensiveness (i.e., reactance). When this confidence is present, workers will stop “reasoning backwards” and falling victim to confirmation bias.

Instead of becoming defensive when another worker speaks up, train your employees to see safety interventions from a different perspective. To help them do this, encourage them to respond to an intervention with one simple statement that is helpful for both parties, said Ragain.

“Thank you for watching my back” goes a long way.