I find it fascinating that Safety thinks that criticism of safety is being anti-safety. In real professions, criticism is normal and understood as necessary for the improvement of the profession. In real professions diversity of worldviews are welcomed and improvement is understood as part of maturity and growth. I have worked in six distinctly different professions and know this to be the case.
In safety, where everything is sacred (https://safetyrisk.net/the-sacred-and-profane-rituals-and-semiotics-a-lesson-for-safety/ ), one must not be critical because this is anti-safety.
Yet, how fascinating that people are happy to be critical of criticism in contradiction of the very point they make. Ah, I get it, criticism is only good if it comes from Safety directed at anti-safety. I get it, one-way safety is the best way to learn. This then is usually followed by projections of ignorance such as: ‘I don’t know anything about SPoR but I know you are wrong’. Splendid stuff. Didn’t you know, head-in-the-sand safety is the best way to learn (https://safetyrisk.net/consciously-safe-unconsciously-unsafe-or-head-in-the-sand-safety/).
At the heart of SPoR is a different worldview/philosophy and a very different method. It is a practical positive methodology with constructive alternatives to the common paradigm of dehumanising persons. For every book or blog published by SPoR there are always positive alternatives offered to improve safety that work (https://www.humandymensions.com/product/it-works-a-new-approach-to-risk-and-safety-book-for-free-download/ ). There can be no improvement or learning without criticism.
The first step in learning is unlearning much of the indoctrination feed by Safety that is neither real, true or works.
What is odd in the reverse criticism of SPoR is that no-one writes back, seeks questions of clarification or discussion. They just want to have a winge but have no alternative. In 20 years of helping organisations across the globe improve safety I have only had three direct enquiries from the safety industry to find out what SPoR does.
SPoR has a very clearly articulated methodology that is positive, constructive and practical but few want to know about it (https://safetyrisk.net/engaging-learning-in-spor/ ). They would much rather keep to the delights of zero and its unethical outcomes. They would rather understand critical thinking as negativity and not see what alternatives are on offer. I guess this is why Safety doesn’t study ethics, it makes criticism so simple.
We are currently running an international workshop on Linguistics and Risk (https://cllr.com.au/product/linguistics-flyer-unit-21/) with people from all over the world (Romania, Canada, USA, Austria, NZ and Australia) and this week we are looking at Critical Discourse Analysis.
You would think Safety would want to know about its messaging and want to do it well, apparently not.
There is no study of Critical Discourse Analysis in safety anywhere across the globe. No wonder most safety messaging is just the same old tired stuff: controls, PPE, controls, systems, controls, performance, controls, injury rates, controls, metrics, policing and oh yes, controls (https://safetyrisk.net/striking-a-balance-between-negative-and-positive-messaging-in-safety/).
This week in the Linguistics program we used several of the SPoR DA tools to help people understand what was in and under safety messaging. We looked at a promotional flyer from a safety company about fatality management using the SPoR DA worksheet tool that has 21 key criteria for analysis. Looking at just the first criteria, we discovered this in the document:
The complete worksheet looks like this:
You can see quite easily from just the analysis of words what this document focused on. How strange that in a document on Fatality Risk Management there is no language on care, helping, listening, learning, empathy, wisdom and relationships. Oh yes, but don’t criticise safety, we know that fatality risk management is about ‘controls’ and ‘work’ etc.
This is the culture of safety and the messaging doesn’t work. But I know, let’s just keep doing the same thing and hope everything improves! Don’t criticise Safety.
Critical Discourse Analysis is just one of many skills Safety doesn’t know how to do, it would much rather message using: pickles, pyramids, blobs and meerkats (https://safetyrisk.net/meerkat-safety-can-it-get-more-dumb/). When you don’t know how to message in safety apparently engineering knows best.
It takes quite some time to learn how to do Critical Discourse Analysis even using this worksheet. However, the first step in learning requires a willingness to criticise Safety so that safety can improve. The second step is not being afraid to step outside of engineering and behaviourism to Transdisciplinary methods that reveal what’s really going on in the messaging of Safety (https://safetyrisk.net/dumb-ways-to-discourse-a-failed-approach-in-safety/).
If you want to know the positive benefits for safety in Critical Discourse Analysis perhaps start here: https://safetyrisk.net/discourse-analysis-safety-alerts-and-safety-boards/
SPoR always offers better alternatives for those who want to learn.
brhttps://safetyrisk.net/dont-criticise-safety/
Prompt