Is Safety-II a subset of Safety Differently? Or is it the other way round? Or is it all HOP now? And whatever happened to behaviour-based safety?
"Get a grip, people!"
This exasperation from Australian clinical psychologist Clive Lloyd, a keynote speaker at the Safeguard conference, whose message was simple: as with clinical psychology, so with safety – the model doesn't matter, or at least nowhere near as much as advocates suggest.
Instead, he said, the best predictor of good outcomes is trust – in psychology, what is called the therapeutic alliance between counsellor and patient, and in H&S, the trust between an organisation's staff and those in charge of deciding how work is done.
"What predicts trust? Integrity, ability/competence, and care. We focus on care. Why? The research is clear. Care is the most powerful of the three."
Lloyd said there are even more theoretical models in psychology than there are in safety, listing a few:
• Psychodynamic ("Freud. Unconscious motivation. Talk therapy. Probably your parents' fault.")
• Behaviourism ("Focus on observable behaviours and manipulate them.")
• Cognitive ("People also have thoughts and feelings.")
• Humanistic ("Surely the context matters?")
• Positive psychology ("Let's study people who are thriving.")
He agreed with Australian researcher/consultant Dave Provan, who had told him that safety science is about 30 years behind psychology. Behavioural psychology, for example, peaked in the 1950s, behaviour-based safety in the 1990s. Similarly, Safety-II could be viewed as Martin Seligman's positive psychology in action.
He recalled being a student in a class taught by Professor Russell Roberts, "a legend in the clinical psychology space". The prof taught the students the psychology models and then split them into groups of four, asking them to identify their favourite model, and why.
"These conversations started respectfully, but within five minutes things got tense, attacking and defending."
The prof then handed down the key insight: the model is not significant. What matters is the therapeutic alliance.
"It's no different in safety. I draw from all models. But if we haven't created a trusting alliance with our people the model won't matter."
A spike in injuries, said Lloyd, is usually cultural in origin. But what does a reactive organisation do in response?
"Does it do the 4Ds, or learning teams, or BBS training? Management's latest attempt to fix us, because we are clearly the problem."
He recalled that when the British ruled India, at one point they were faced with the city of Delhi swarming with cobras. Their idea? If you can trap a cobra and bring it to us, we will pay you.
"BBS at its best! Or worst."
Of course, people started breeding cobras.
"A well intentioned intervention that made things worse."
Instead, as always, he advocated consistently demonstrating care for people as the baseline from which trust is built and a model may successfully be explored.