Many enter the safety industry for noble and virtuous reasons. We often see people in safety use the word ‘passion’ to justify what they do. However, once safety work starts so does the potential for moral injury.

I speak to safety people all the time and many of them describe the moral dilemmas they face each day, doing things required of them that they know are completely meaningless. I spoke to a safety person yesterday that has to report all this so called ‘safety data’ each month (LTIs, TRIFR, psychosocial injury, compensation data etc) knowing that none of it has any remote connection to safety. They do so because the CEO, CFO and GM demand it, even though they seek to educate executives that such ‘indicators’ are not ‘indicators’ of anything. The time taken to develop these reports is extensive and this keeps them away from what they know is more important, like engagement.

Then there are these ‘meetings’ where there is no Meeting, that all seem to be checking up processes on the safety team about what they do. Most of the time they are not doing what they entered the industry to do but rather meeting expectations of the organisation that thinks data and paperwork is safety.

This situation creates moral injury.

Moral injury is unseen and unmeasurable.

Whilst the discipline of moral injury is most anchored to post-military service, it does relate more broadly to working against one’s own moral belief by maintaining an ethic/vice of others creates internal conflict that results in psychosocial injury. One need not be exposed to the extremities of military conflict to suffer other forms of trauma and distress.

This is also compounded by policy enshrined in a code of ethics one must sign on to that is in conflict with one’s own moral beliefs.

What happens in safety is that such moral conflict is accepted as normal the enculturated.

Most people I speak to in the safety industry accept this disconnectedness, dysfunction and moral dualism as just part of the job. So much so, it is never discussed or raised as a point of psychosocial injury.

Similarly, being forced to use semiotic methods (Heinrich, Reason’s swiss-cheese, HOP Jenga blocks, risk matrix etc) without an underlying methodology (philosophy) brings the hidden vices of the semiotics into conflict with the virtues the safety advisor holds. Eg, one could believe that the principle of justice is critical to safety work but be caught in a HOP organisation that tells you ‘blame fixes nothing’. Or, be forced to discipline workers because ‘all accidents are preventable’.

What is at risk in this situation is that one’s job can be put on the line by standing up for what one thinks is morally right, regardless of the hidden principles hidden in slogans or a code of ethics. Such a situation can drive feelings of shame, guilt, loss of trust, anger, entrapment, trauma and demoralisation. This is when safety looks for a new employer or enters the constant movement of safety people through organisations.

What makes this even more complicated is that the safety curriculum doesn’t prepare the industry for this conflict or how to deal with it. Similarly, the safety curriculum doesn’t provide any skills in the kind of communications skills required to deal with moral conflict.

Methods such a journaling, keeping a reflective diary or enabling psychosocial supervision can help but these only follow when the problem has been identified and defined. Unfortunately, the discipline of ethics is also absent from the safety curriculum and so even before entering the workforce, safety advisors are not practiced at recognising psychosocial and moral harm.

A good start is to undertake some research into the matter:

Further, in SPoR, we have developed methods to help organisations move away from methods that foster moral distress. You can read about SPoR methodology and methods here:

All the methods of SPoR are positive and practical for tackling the wicked problem of risk.