I think the premise of the paper is right. Many activities that Safety undertakes provide no valuable outcome for the ‘safety of work’. Many of the activities of Safety developed over the years accumulate and a rarely scrutinized. And once something comes into Safety it is attributed with value where there is none. Then it becomes politicized and unable to be eliminated. We see this with silly things like ‘safety moments’, take 5s and zero. Once something comes into any organisation it is quickly institutionalised and then becomes immovable, regardless of the fact that it has no value. Then once critical thinking is demonised, everything that follows, just becomes ‘busy work’.
The trouble with this paper is, it divides ‘safety work’ into four aspects, these are:
- Social safety – affirming that safety is valued and achieved
- Demonstrated safety – proving safety to external stakeholders
- Administrative safety – establishing and following clear rules and requirements for safety
- Physical safety – changing the work environment for safety
Such a division of work is problematic, once you limit ‘safety work’ to these four ‘types’, the reader is lead down the pathway to the assumptions of Rae and Provan about what safety is.
Safety is about none of these things.
Safety is about helping persons tackle risk. It is about the ethical engagement of others in the way they work that, respects their personhood and helps them tackle risk.
There is nothing in this paper by Provan or Rae that makes any mention of: persons, risk, ethics or helping. No surprises there, this is how Safety identifies itself. When you think zero is a moral goal, you clearly have little idea about ethics, personhood, helping or power.
Without a foundation in ethics, safety will never become professional.
When your lens is zero=safety (https://safetyrisk.net/safetyzero-culture/) whatever follows is traditional safety. And these four types are just more traditional safety: affirming safety (more of the same), proving safety (which it doesn’t), administrating rules (policing) and physical safety (the love of objects and injury counting). Safety is not about any of these things.
At no place in this paper is there any discussion of the semiotics of safety, the myths and rituals of Safety or, the religious nature of Safety. All of these are never spoken about when Safety discusses ‘safety culture’. Yet, all of these are foundational to an understand ‘safety work’. Safety is so good at distraction, ensuring it always talks about what it isn’t. This is why under the myth of zero safety has little choice but to fall into the quagmire of hyper-safety (https://safetyrisk.net/the-horrors-of-hyper-safety/).
So, what we have here is a paper about ‘safety work’ that has little to do with the safety of work. It’s what safety does so well, ensuring that it makes lots of noise about what it isn’t. This is the work of Safety code (https://safetyrisk.net/deciphering-safety-code/).
When your foundation is the adoration of zero=safety, all critical thinking ceases. This produces a special kind of ‘smoke screen safety’ that talks about ‘safety differently’, throws about a few slogans and hopes that something will change. Smoke screen safety is the best way to make sure nothing changes. And, when nothing changes, Safety turns to ‘punk rock safety’ and makes more noise in the hope that swearing creates credibility. Or, more slogans (https://safetyrisk.net/the-seduction-of-slogans-in-safety-2/) hoping that slogans generate a methodology.
What is hidden underneath all of this noise is a lack of a methodology and method.
When you have no methodology or method, a smokescreen and a bunch of slogans will do.
If you are interested in a methodology and method for an ethical approach to tackling risk and respect for persons in the process of tackling risk, then it’s as easy as an email and ask a question: admin@spor.com.au
brhttps://safetyrisk.net/smoke-screen-safety/
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