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UWA Business School
It would be a rare worker who has not felt pressure to be more productive. It would be an even rarer worker who hasn't felt tempted to cut corners in order to increase their productivity. However, for workers in safety-critical jobs, cutting corners can have very real consequences.

In the 2005-06 financial year, 6.4 per cent of Australian workers suffered a work-related injury, costing the economy $57.5 billion. Meanwhile, anecdotal evidence suggests that the proportion of first-timers in the oil and gas industry who are injured on the job could be as high as 80 per cent.

This is why researchers from The University of Western Australia Business School are investigating how safety can be enhanced without unnecessarily impacting on productivity.

Associate Professor Gillian Yeo and her team are examining the ways in which leaders, teams, and organisations can affect the prioritisation of safety versus productivity by individual workers. ‘I've only been here [Perth] 18 months; the mining industry is so big, and the people in it are keen to collaborate on research projects,' she says.

The researchers will look at the factors that influence whether workers choose to prioritise safety or productivity goals. One factor to consider, says Associate Professor Yeo, is whether safety and productivity are framed as approach and/or avoidance goals. It is an issue that is being investigated by one of her PhD students, Timothy Ballard.

‘An approach goal reflects an aim to gain something that you want,' Associate Professor Yeo explains. ‘For example, in university you might aim to get a really good grade in your course. Alternatively, an avoidance goal would be where you avoid something that you don't want - for example, avoiding failure. In everyday life and work you can aim for things you want or avoid getting what you don't want.

‘These goals stimulate very different processes in how we go about doing things. Approach goals generally motivate people to put in high levels of effort and success is associated with enthusiasm and excitement. Avoidance goals generally stimulate patterns of withdrawing effort so that you don't make a mistake, and success is associated with relief. Productivity and safety can be framed as either approach or avoidance goals, and the impact of this framing is likely to depend on factors such as the type of person, the task context, and the culture of the organisation.'

Another factor likely to affect goal prioritisation is whether or not the organisation has an error management culture. ‘Some organisations see errors as something to be avoided at all cost, whereas others see errors as something we should learn from,' she says. ‘So there are two organisational views: error avoidance, or the view that errors will happen and just need to be managed.'

Tied into this is the way in which organisations advocate safety goals. ‘For example,' explains the organisational behaviour expert, ‘productivity is often attached to the goal of promotion, and in some organisations there is no clear punishment for safety breaches. In contrast, air traffic controllers can be sacked if they allow two aircraft within five nautical miles of each other, which is a very clear punishment.'

Because of the way in which safety and productivity are linked, there is often a trade-off between the two. ‘In healthcare, the more patients you see, the more productive you are, but doing so would be risky because you may miss critical cases that need special attention,' explains Associate Professor Yeo. ‘Similarly, in air traffic control efficient flight times mean getting as many aircraft through as quickly as possible, but the more aircraft you send through, the greater the risk in terms of aircraft conflicts.'

Associate Professor Yeo emphasises that it is possible to prioritise safety even in non-safety critical contexts. ‘For example, in a non-safety critical context such as a university, the goals of teaching and publishing usually present little risk to safety. Therefore, safety and productivity goals aren't in obvious competition with each other. But even in these non-safety critical environments, things like having regular fire drills and fire wardens will still affect the safety culture,' she says.

Leadership also plays a vital role in defining goals. ‘This is especially so for emergency response situations - bushfires, offshore platforms, even general fire and rescue,' says Associate Professor Yeo. ‘It is customary for the leader to set the goals. It's control and command, and it is essential that leaders communicate goals and that team members interpret and enact these goals.'

This crucial communication process can, however, be disrupted by many factors, including the emotions created by high-stress situations. ‘How the leader displays emotions may spill over to the team and many factors are likely to impact on how effectively the team regulates emotions,' explains Associate Professor Yeo.

Acknowledging these disruptions, Associate Professor Yeo will be examining the ways in which safety goals can be communicated more effectively. These include basic processes such as initial briefing sessions, as well as time-outs throughout the incident to cross-check the team's understanding of what has been achieved, who is doing what, and where the team needs to go.

‘Part of goal setting is the practice of the team that occurs at a subconscious level,' explains Associate Professor Yeo. ‘We will ask teams to watch videos of themselves, and we'll examine what they were thinking, and instances of miscommunication.'

So what about the role of individual personalities? ‘Some people have a propensity to take risks,' accepts Associate Professor Yeo. ‘But,' she adds, ‘you can be someone who in general takes a lot of risks, and this may or may not cross home/work boundaries.

‘Promotion-focused personalities have a tendency to focus on gaining desired things, and do whatever they can to do that. Prevention-focused personalities are motivated by losses and if there is a chance of loss they are motivated to change that. We're trying to find that ideal profile: people who are high in both prevention-focused and promotion-focused behaviour.'

Yet even with a balanced personality and clear communication processes, workers can still make irrational decisions. ‘There is evidence to suggest that under stress we're more likely to make decisions based on emotions as opposed to cognitively-based, thought out decisions,' says Associate Professor Yeo. ‘There are conflicting views on this; some researchers think that emotions might facilitate the process of goal prioritisation and provide shortcuts (such as relying on physiological adrenalin) to help us make rapid decisions.'

Associate Professor Kerrie Unsworth, also from The University of Western Australia Business School, is approaching safety from the perspective of mindfulness. ‘I wanted to take a different approach,' she explains. ‘It's not about blaming the individual, but teaching techniques and strategies they can use, and having those techniques supported by the organisation. I think seeing safety as separate to productivity is not necessarily right, and that we can create a win-win situation.

‘Being mindful means that they [workers] will be aware of things maybe going wrong - things that may cause failure or faults. It's not that safety has to take time away from productivity. It's not a complete either/or; we use the same tools for both.

‘When you're being mindful, you're in control of your attention, of whether you're focusing all of your attention on one aspect or whether you're not being mindful and instead having some downtime.'

However, Associate Professor Unsworth acknowledges that encouraging mindfulness will be a difficult process. ‘It's not an easy thing to do for people who aren't used to it,' she says. ‘We can't expect too much; we have to be realistic, include downtime, and not expect mindfulness straight away.'

Working with an oil and gas company, Associate Professor Unsworth will be developing interventions to encourage mindfulness. ‘One idea is having a beeper that goes off randomly, and triggers the worker to think about where their attention is and also gets them used to switching attention,' she says. ‘We also need to talk about mindfulness in meetings; it is about formalising mindfulness and getting people used to it.'

The push for safety is certainly starting to garner more attention. This year, the inaugural Corporate Health and Productivity Awards were held in Melbourne. They were won by the Queensland Department of Public Works, which attributed gains in productivity to the success of its employee health and welfare programme.

‘We've dropped nearly 1,000 days in terms of our days lost to workplace injury in the last three years alone,' said Allan Lally, manager of workplace health and safety at the department. However, Mr. Lally also acknowledged that the financial cost of the programme meant that it was perceived as risky in the business world. ‘It probably takes a bit of courage for a director general and a deputy director general to go down this path,' he admitted.

Associate Professor Yeo asserts that the optimum balance between safety and productivity is to get both of them right. That means, she explains, ‘getting the perfect balance between producing as much as you need and want to produce, but without posing a risk to safety.'

With more research being undertaken into the area, it is an optimum balance that may soon become easier for both employers and workers to achieve.

Media Reference

Heather Merritt
Director, External Relations
UWA Business School
T: +618 6488 8171
E: [email protected]

Verity Chia
Communications Officer
UWA Business School
E: [email protected]