Your safety culture will actually incite risk-taking behaviours - if you don’t take care of it.
Take our behaviour on motorways, where it is an accepted cultural norm to break the safe speed limit. Our focus tends to be on getting to our destination in the fastest possible time and we perceive that everyone else is doing the same. However, when approaching a speed camera our focus shifts and we slow down, only to speed up again when we’re out of range. In those moments we are focused on ‘not getting caught’, rather than on our own safety.
So why don’t we care enough about our safety? Well, part of the reason is the hypnotic effect of observing what other people do. We don’t tend to analyse everything we see, instead we just absorb it. Everyone else speeds, so we do, it isn’t a conscious decision. This is how hypnosis works - let me explain;
Hypnosis is a human condition that allows suggestions to bypass the conscious mind and implants them directly into the subconscious mind.
It may help to know that we can control what we allow into our conscious mind and this gives us choices about our thoughts and behaviours. However, this is not true of any suggestions or observations that go directly to the subconscious mind - these become automatic thoughts and behaviours, outside of our control. This is how stage hypnotists, who subtly put suggestions into the subconscious mind, can make people behave in ways that they wouldn’t normally.
These hypnotic conditions are replicated in the workplace, on a minute-by-minute basis. Consider all the different ways that safety standards are allowed to slip; improvising with the wrong tools, not wearing the right PPE, not walking single file in the cess, working too close to open lines, the CoSS working on the tools, the knee jerk safety decisions, the turning a blind eye… the list is endless. Some are blatant, and some are subtle, but workers observe all of them and repeatedly get the subconscious message that safety isn’t important.
Perhaps now you can see that this constant drip feed of accepted, low safety standards has a hypnotic effect on workforce behaviour. They become subconsciously programmed to subordinate safety, to other priorities. Their focus is on getting the job done and not getting caught when shortcuts are taken. In actual fact, you can see how they have been conditioned not to focus on personal safety.
Unfortunately, if a worker is caught taking a risk they will be punished. This seems unfair. They didn’t create or dictate the culture that has influenced their risk-taking behaviour, that responsibility falls to the safety leadership. What you accept will be normalised and adhered to. This is why it is so important not to overlook even the smallest slip in safety standards.
Of course, any organisation that has a great safety culture has created an environment where consistently good standards are expected and adhered to, and lowering of standards is not tolerated. This, in turn, subconsciously hypnotises workers into significantly reducing risk-taking thoughts and behaviours.
Either way, standards are self-perpetuating and now you are consciously aware of it - it’s up to you to create the hypnotic conditions that keep workers automatically thinking and behaving safely.
If you're interested in learning more about safety culture on the railway or want to chat about overcoming negative hypnotic conditions, get in touch with Jules.
