SAFETY
work the safe way, with the correct process
and tools even though it may take longer, or
do they take shortcuts to get the job done
faster because they perceive that is what
the company really wants? Just because a
company “talks the talk” when it comes to
safety culture doesn’t necessarily mean that
every employee is walking the walk, so to
speak, with those beliefs.
“Culture is everything,” said Ganschow.
“In a positive culture, everyone knows what
is expected of them, they are given the
training and tools to perform tasks safely
and efficiently, they get measured on the
completion of the work and recognition
for what they did well or coaching for ways
they can improve.”
Organizations with positive cultures
generally see people working the same way
regardless of whether a supervisor or anyone
else is watching, he says. For organizations
with cultures that don’t have clearly
defined safety expectations for every position,
people tend to only do the “right”
things when the safety manager is watching.
Left alone on the job site, employees go
back to business as usual, focusing on production
activities that they perceive their
boss desires more.
It’s important that leaders understand
the “why” behind human behavior in order
to influence it. For construction companies
wanting to foster a better safety culture in
their firms, it’s critical to learn more about
the psychology of safety.
Why compliance isn’t enough
Safety rules and regulations have undoubtedly
made the construction industry safer.
However, safety built around compliance
alone is not enough.
“Regulations focus solely on managing
and mitigating hazards,” said Ganschow.
“However, it’s not the mere presences of
hazards on a worksite that result in employees
getting injured. In most cases, the root
cause of workplace injuries is behavior driven
by psychology.”
He mentions the fact that driving down
an interstate presents people with potentially
fatal hazards from every angle, and
yet the majority of people will never be in a
serious car accident.
“What excites me and other safety professionals
is the journey of understanding
these curiosities and how to use them to
our advantage in improving culture and
overall safety results,” said Ganschow.
The psychology
To figure out why people make certain
decisions, we first need to have a
basic understanding of how our brains
process information.
“It’s a misconception that we are conscious
of our actions and making rational
decisions all the time,” said Ganschow.
“This is because of the way our brains
are wired. We are inundated with approximately
13,000 bits of information every
eighteenth of a second.”
People do not consciously perceive and
respond to all of that stimuli, he says; rather,
a network of neurons in the brain stem
called the reticular activating system (RAS)
filters that unmanageable data stream to
around seven bits of data that we consciously
process.
“It’s a survival mechanism to keep our
‘biological computers’ from overloading,”
said Ganschow. “We focus on those few
stimuli that are most critical in the moment.”
This means that routine tasks, like repetitive
jobs, are performed on human autopilot,
he says. People are still processing what
they are doing, but not consciously paying
attention – those familiar tasks are relegated
to the primitive “fast brain.”
yuttana590623/123RF
According to Ganschow, a popular model for explaining human
motivation in response to social factors is the S.C.A.R.F. model,
which stands for status, certainty, autonomy, relatedness and fairness.
84 | ISSUE 2 2020 www.piledrivers.org
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