Does a safety record with zero incidents mean risks are sufficiently managed?

The research says it does not, explains Marcin Nazaruk, Ph.D. In fact, zero or few incidents mean less insight is available to safety leaders, who often learn a lot about what’s really going on in the workplace from incident investigations.

Nazaruk, a safety leader and global expert in proactive learning, champions “learning from normal work,” a proactive risk reduction method in which safety professionals study the successful, if imperfect, completion of everyday tasks.

“The conditions leading to an incident do not unexpectedly materialize seconds before the event, but are present most of the time,” and safety professionals can learn a lot from them, Nazaruk writes in his Professional Safety article, “Learning From Normal Work: How to Proactively Reduce Risk When Nothing Goes Wrong.”

What Is Learning From Normal Work?

Learning from normal work involves using tools like brief conversations, task walkthroughs or learning teams to understand the challenges workers face and what they need from each other to complete a task.

These activities allow safety professionals to identify constraints — such as outdated procedures, insufficient time or space, unavailable tools, confusing directions — and the adaptations workers make as a result of these constraints.

These adaptations, such as modifying a basic tool to complete a job in the absence of the correct tool, are often labeled “unsafe.”

Leaders viewing the behavior as an adaptation can ask questions to determine why the adaptation was made, then develop a plan to address those factors. This mindset shift helps people open up about their work because they know they will not face punitive consequences and their challenges will be addressed in a way that reduces risk.

3 Practical Tools to Help You Learn From Normal Work

Nazaruk provides three key tools to help safety professionals start learning from normal work, along with suggestions for incorporating these tools into your normal work.

1. Refreshing safety conversation: This is a 10- to 20-minute “conversation that focuses on listening to the challenges faced by operators and their needs, rather than emphasizing rule awareness or compliance.” Your goal is not to check for knowledge or controls but to better understand the challenges of the task and partner with the operator to resolve them. Questions might include:

• What do you need to be set up for success?
• What do you need to complete this work safely and efficiently?
• What is getting in the way of completing this task safely and efficiently?
• What makes this job difficult?
• What are some situations when you need to deviate from procedures to complete the job?
• What is the advantage of doing it this way?

How to integrate: Many companies have internal programs such as leadership field visits or behavioral observations. The questions above can be integrated into these efforts, offering new opportunities for insight.

2. Walk-through/Talk-through (WTTT): In a WTTT, a task is broken down into steps, and each step is discussed to explore constraints and what makes each step difficult, Nazaruk writes. However, unlike a typical job safety analysis, a WTTT does not focus on identifying hazards, but on identifying constraints that contribute to risk. A WTTT uses a four-column table that captures the job steps, consequences if the step is improperly performed, constraints and improvements.

How to integrate: Identifying constraints and constraint optimizations as part of a task-level risk or job safety assessment allows you to include a learning from normal work perspective.

3. Learning teams: This tool takes more time and effort than the others. It consists of a “semi-structured conversation with a small group of workers doing the job that is analyzed.” For example, a learning team was convened to work with three crane operators to understand the challenges of moving seven-ton spools across a warehouse. They learned that because of space constraints, a spotter was required to work dangerously close to the spool. The team discovered that a remote control would eliminate the need for a spotter and remove the risk entirely.

How to integrate: Learning teams can be used proactively or as part of an incident investigation to unearth constraints that a standard risk assessment or an investigation may not find.

How to Implement What You Learn

Developing a “learning from normal work” program requires onboarding workers who will directly implement and interact with the new program as well as organizational leaders. Safety professionals should help leaders shift from a mindset focused on learning from incidents to one that’s focused on learning from normal work. Those who don’t may “end up in a situation where leaders are not aligned, or leaders push back on findings that do not blame people or they use unhelpful behaviors such as criticism or other penalties for admitted mistakes, which can create more damage than help,” Nazaruk writes.

He recommends a six-step method to get everyone on board:

• Step 1: Present the idea. Organize short presentations or one- to two-hour webinars for senior leaders and key decision-makers to familiarize them with the topic, gauge their interest and obtain feedback.
• Step 2: Run a small-scale pilot. Focus on an existing task that has resulted in an injury or injuries, or a task with a high potential for a severe outcome. Use one of the three tools or create a one-day leadership workshop to allow leaders to gain in-depth insight, discuss and debate.
• Step 3: Prepare facilitators. These individuals must “build their skill set of asking questions that put workers at ease to reveal constraints, errors or noncompliance,” Nazaruk writes. This typically takes two to three days and includes learning how to conduct a WTTT or a learning team.
• Step 4: Practice and coach participants. As facilitators conduct WTTTs and learning teams, participants will test their skills and receive coaching. Safety leaders can identify internal champions through that process.
• Step 5: Develop internal champions and experts. “Some companies put champions through longer, more in-depth training that covers topics such as how to proactively identify ‘causes’ of incidents before they happen, how people make decisions, how to predict error and non-compliance, proactive leadership, design that sets people up for failure and modern investigation techniques,” Nazaruk writes.
• Step 6: Develop an implementation plan. This effort combines communication efforts and roll-out details to ensure that proactive learning is sustainable. Implementation plans should address any required shifts to the mindset, skill set and tool set of an organization.  

Completing these steps carries many benefits. “Learning from normal work brings many other benefits such as increased psychological safety, culture change, stronger speak-up behaviors and better employee engagement, as well as reduction in quality defects and operational upsets,” Nazaruk writes.

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