Why Raising the Visibility of Health and Safety in your Workplace Might Increase your Incident Rate

And Why that can be a Good Thing ...

Hello and welcome to this week’s edition of the Safety First Journal.

This week I want to talk about an interesting phenomenon I’ve seen many times over the years. It goes something like this:

A company decides that they want to increase their focus on health and safety in the workplace. They might hire a new Health and Safety team, increase visibility with regular safety talks and signage, add a new training program or put a slew of new policies and procedures in place. The expectation is that with all the increased time and attention spent on safety improvements, incident rates will show an immediate drop.

It’s a reasonable expectation, but that’s not what happens.

Many times in my career I’ve seen that increased focus on safety often leads to an increase in incident rates, not a drop.

When this happens, managers and safety professionals are often confused. “We put all this emphasis on working safely and our incident rate went up - what the heck is going on?”

Here’s the Problem

I’ve seen this happen often enough that I’m convinced it’s not a coincidence. It’s just the first step on the road to improvement.

Let’s see what’s really going on:

· Changes are made and management expects to see immediate improvements. Unfortunately, I hate to tell you, but that’s not how it works. Building a proactive safety culture takes time. If your business has a history of ignoring safety concerns, discouraging reporting or allowing unsafe practices to persist, it will take time to reverse these behaviours. A new safety procedure or report form, in and of itself, is not a miracle cure.

· Instead, incident numbers rise (or appear to). Usually, a spike in incident rates in the early days of a new safety initiative reflects not an increase in incidents that are actually happening, it reflects an increase in incidents that are being reported.

· This can feel like failure but is more often a sign of progress. It can be discouraging to see incidents rise when you’re doing everything you can to prevent them, but often in this stage, you’re just starting to see the true state of your safety program. If you stay with the process, you’ll begin to see incidents drop over time.

Why it Happens

Here’s why I think we see this happen so often. In a nutshell, more eyes and attention = more accurate reporting.

This well documented principle in human psychology is called the Hawthorne Effect. When people know they’re being observed, it changes their behaviour. Increased visibility of your safety program leads to more people being aware of hazards, greater knowledge of what good safety culture looks like, and increased willingness to speak up and report hazards and incidents.

When you put more emphasis on safety:

· Hidden issues come to the surface. Things that employees may not have recognized as hazards or incidents previously are now more likely to be identified.

· Workers feel safer reporting problems. When safety is highlighted, workers may feel like they have greater ‘permission’ to speak up and report issues they otherwise wouldn’t.

· Better observation – workers and supervisors are more attuned to the risks. Workers and supervisors with a better understanding of health and safety are more likely to spot problems.

· Paper numbers vs reality – old data may have been incomplete, the spike may reflect the previously unrecognized reality, not deterioration. Finally, it’s worthwhile to recognize that the old data, especially if your old safety program was not ideal, may not be complete. Increased reporting may simply reflect a reality that had not previously been recognized.

Why it can be a Good Thing

So how can increased incidents be a positive thing? Isn’t the goal to reduce incidents and injuries?

Of course it is. No one wants to see incidents or injuries at work. But as unfortunate as they are, every incident gives you a chance to learn and grow and prevent similar events in the future. Every incident that occurs today, can end up preventing many similar incidents in the future, if you examine it, learn from it and put the right corrective actions in place.

Here’s why:

· You can’t fix what you don’t see. You have to know the current state of your safety program before you can improve it. Increased reporting = increased knowledge and awareness.

· Rise in reports shows your system is working. While you don’t want to see increased reports, the reality is that the fact that employees are willing and able to report hazards and incidents builds a culture of honesty and ownership around safety and levels up your company’s safety culture.

· Better data = increased prevention. The more data you have, the greater your understanding of safety risks in your workplace and the better chance you have to prevent future issues.

How to use it to your Advantage

Finally, just being aware of this phenomenon isn’t enough. To really make this work, you need to look for ways to take advantage of it to build on your workplace safety culture.

· Turn increased visibility into long term improvement. Use this opportunity to further dialogue and partner with your workers to make long term progress.

· Reframe it: More reports = healthier safety culture. I often see near miss reports as positive. Not because there was a near miss, but because a) by definition, no one got hurt and b) there’s an opportunity to learn. Encouraging this mindset among workers and management helps keep them from getting discouraged when the numbers go up.

· Use reports and root causes to fuel prevention measures. Make sure you drill down to the root causes of incidents and ensure that corrective actions are identified and completed as soon as is practical.

· Encourage reporting – recognize those who raise concerns. Thanking employees who raise concerns rather than censuring them helps build trust and a positive partnership with your team.

· Stay the course – resist the urge to clamp down on reporting to fix the numbers. Stay focused on real improvement. It’s easy to get frustrated or react negatively when you see incident rates going up, but stick with it. The important thing is not the current incident numbers but the improvements you’re making. It takes time and doesn’t come easily, but improvement will come if you stick with the process.

A higher incident rate doesn’t always mean you’re doing worse, it might just mean you’re finally seeing the whole picture. Which means now you have a chance to change it.

Well, that’s it for this week. Let me know in the comments if you’ve had similar experience in your workplace and what you did about it.

The Safety First Journal is published every Tuesday on LinkedIn and Substack. In addition to the Safety First Journal, I also ghostwrite thought leadership articles for Safety Professionals to help them build their online presence and attract more opportunity in their careers. If you’d like to learn more about how I can help, please reach out.