One of the profound gaps in the training of people in safety is a lack of awareness of human ‘being’. With so much focus on hazards and so little focus on persons, Safety counts injury rates, hazards and regulations as if persons are not connected. The fact that Safety names Psychosocial Health as a ‘hazard’ demonstrates the industry’s’ completed disconnectedness with the human person. Only Safety could sustain the crazy idea that the best way to tackle Psychosocial Health is to control objects in the workplace.

One of the most profound inadequacies of Safety is its complete avoidance of expertise in social relationships.

Nothing demonstrates this disconnectedness more than the lack of training for safety people in the nature of trauma, distress, anguish and suffering. Whilst Safety loves to talk about ‘zero harm’, it has no expertise or curriculum for knowing what that means. Then, when an event happens and people are harmed, Safety is expected to waltz into an accident scene and collect data for a report. This collection of data includes: no training in people skills, interviewing skills, expertise in obtaining testimony or listening skills. A recipe for a disaster.

Any event where people are harmed brings various degrees of loss and trauma for victim and witness alike. Knowing how to approach people who are traumatised and having sensitivity to trauma are foundational to any necessity to interview anyone.

In safety, this lack of expertise in people skills is equally matched by a lack of skill in ethics, thus enabling the brutalisation of persons in the name of good, safety.

Anyone who is traumatised cannot give accurate or valid information, especially if that information is gleaned at the height of trauma (https://groundswell.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Working-with-clients-who-have-experienced-trauma.pdf ). Yet, we know, the urgency with which Safety (under pressure from managers) seeks to extract information in an investigation ignores everything we know about traumatised persons.

Perhaps one could look across the many safety investigations methods on the market and look for critical training in trauma, suffering, empathy, care, trust and helping. You won’t find much. Acute stress after trauma is known as Post-Traumatic Stress and the power and intensity of this stress, varies in everyone. Understanding this alone should promote caution, sensitivity and humility in the face of follow up to any event.

One thing is for sure. Obtaining reliable testimony, is not a skill that is a focus of any safety investigations training.

If you want to understand the nature of trauma, you could start researching here: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/51752068_Posttraumatic_stress_disorder_and_the_nature_of_trauma or here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK207191/

In SPoR, we deliver comprehensive training in incident investigations that include a focus on understanding trauma and skills in obtaining testimony. The program is called SEEK (https://cllr.com.au/product/seek-the-social-psychology-of-event-investigations-unit-2-elearning/) and is one of our modules in high demand. If you are interested in studying SEEK you can email here: admin@spor.com.au and we can begin a coaching/learning process for you.