Occupational safety is about saving lives and ensuring quality of life: how many people are unnecessarily injured in the workplace? Another problem exists in the frequency with which employers and unions, and people in general, use safety as a vehicle to highlight other unrelated issues of importance, particularly industry issues.

What is the most important in security? Are you reducing injury costs? No, that is the wrong approach. Are people conforming to a set of rules? Is it about the altruistic notion of ‘saving lives’ as mentioned above? What is the true purpose of security?

Many people talk about it and it seems easy, but there is a world of work and a lot of time to invest in achieving the magic of safety culture; it’s just not that easy to make security work. One of the world’s leading experts on security psychology is E. Scott Geller. He teamed up with renowned security convert, burn victim Charlie Morecraft, to produce “Docker Meets Doctor” and discuss the keys to making security “more than a priority.”

Safety is about empowerment. It is about ensuring that we all take responsibility for security, each one of us; fixing things as they come up, taking individual responsibility and ownership of tea issue. This is difficult as it requires effort and motivation, particularly in the absence of a reward for responsible behavior. When we can do things without reward, we are well on our way to having resilient attitudes and security ownership.

It’s about more people with a “what can I do to make a difference?” mindset. The greater the number of people who say this, the greater the probability that a critical mass will “spark” a security culture change based on the actively care model. Geller is dumbfounded when he drives “only getting excited about safety when someone gets hurt.” On top of this, security is too often talked about in negative terms. This is not good psychology: people are much more prepared to seek success than to avoid failure. Geller says that we need “hit-seeking” attitudes to succeed in managing security.

Behavioral security has metamorphosed a bit in recent years from a pure focus on people’s behavior, to a slightly softer, truer approach to “people-based” security. It includes a combined approach of person-based security Y behavior based safety. It is more holistic and representative of the reality of the work dynamic, and in particular of the people who make it up.

Morecraft has a different, though no less effective, approach compared to Geller. Her story shocks everyone; a person who basically lost everything to a horrible injury; job, livelihood, health and family… the list goes on. He says, “There’s no rocket science about safety, it’s about families!” Geller follows him with a terrifying story of his own, the everyday cancer discovery that shocked him into a new “reality.” He relates that “we are more afraid of having cancer than of having an accident at work”. He said the irony was the social support he received from having cancer; this type of support is almost unheard of when someone suffers a serious injury on the job.

Morecraft travels the world preaching the message of safety, speaking to victims of serious burn injuries. This depresses him due to the plain truth; the victim is No it’s going to be alright-there lives change forever for the worse. He is sick of being “in hell” with these people, but he knows the reality is that they need him and they need hope. The frustrating thing is how can you give them hope when there really is little?

If there is a face to a security issue, there is likely to be an emotional response and this helps. In his opinion, the reason for the emotional response to 9/11 was simply that there was a “face” to the tragedy. Why isn’t there more outrage over the 40,000 who die on America’s highways each year, or the countless thousands who commit suicide? They feel that it is simply because there is no expensive to the highway toll and not expensive to the silent person in complete torment, who simply cannot exist for a single moment longer, ending it all.

We have to go back to the ‘people element’ if security is to remain above a simple priority that can be ‘re-prioritised’. Security must become a value; as values do not change. There is no rocket science for safety, just some basic, solid principles about using emotions and building effectiveness (the “I can do this/it will work” attitude) inside the minds of those who are the most affected workers. Managers and senior executives are key to this change.

Security is not rocket science, it’s simply about people. The real purpose of security is to empower people to make changes. They want to be safe – their lives, their livelihoods and their families depend on it!

© Steve J. Wickham, 2008. All rights reserved worldwide.

Acknowledgment to Dr. E. Scott Geller and Charlie Morecraft and their vision for the safety of people around the world.