The psychology of perception and visibility seem to be of little interest to an industry consumed with counting hazards, injury and objects. When you think that psychosocial harm is about ‘hazards’ (https://safetyrisk.net/what-is-psychosocial-safety/) you clearly have no idea what psychosocial harm is. And don’t tell me language doesn’t matter (https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/pm/adelaide-crow-rankine-accused-of-homophobic-slur-/105669108).

The real problem with the culture of Safety and its preoccupation with objects is that people are NOT ‘seen’ as persons. Even when we see nonsense language like ‘human factors’ we know that humans are seen as ‘factors’ in a system. When we see language like ‘human capacity’ and ‘organisational performance’ (HOP), we know that humans are factors in a system. The focus is always on the systems in traditional safety like HOP. There is no safety differently.

You have heard the expression, ‘you can’t see the forest for the trees’? Well, the same applies to the workplace except in safety, ‘you can’t see the persons for the objects’.

When the primary task of Safety is to count hazards, police PPE and injury rates, one needs no skills to ‘see’ people. Indeed, the popular language of ‘zero vision’ means exactly that, Safety has no vision for persons, just a focus on numbers.

We saw yesterday the masquerade of Safety worship of high-vis (https://safetyrisk.net/the-ppe-masquerade/). But this focus on things physically visible is a distraction from the real harm that is not visible. There was a wonderful essay this week in Aeon about loneliness in the workplace (https://aeon.co/essays/our-crisis-is-not-loneliness-but-human-beings-becoming-invisible?). And, the more we focus on AI and technology, the less people experience the simple art of conversation.

Nowhere in any safety qualification is there even the basics of conversation, listening and engagement. Somehow, Safety thinks such skills don’t require learning and hard work.

In this article in Aeon, we read about ‘the depersonalisation crisis’. The busyier we become, the less time we have for a simple cup of coffee and some listening (https://www.humandymensions.com/product/real-meeting-a-book-on-being-in-leadership/), the less people experience ‘Real Meeting’. In Safety we can add, ‘the de-humanisation crisis’. Just do a language audit of any common safety text and look for critical language about relationships, listening and personhood, it’s not there. What we have is an abundance of the language of ‘hazards’ and nonsense of Hierarchy of Controls of hazards.

Language is the bedrock of culture, NOT behaviours. Just audit the language in your organisation and tell me what you find.

Technology and Technique (Ellul) are not the answer for being seen on site. And when you have safety associations like the AIHS declaring ‘humans as hazards’ (https://safetyrisk.net/the-enemy-of-safety-humans/) you know, that Safety is an industry of brutalism and alienation of persons.

Nothing is more destructive to safety culture than not being ‘seen’.

In Safety, PPE and High-Vis serve as an exoskeleton for the person inside. As long as the outside appearance is right, we don’t need to ‘see’ the person inside. It seems as long as the high-vis is right and the hazards are controlled everything is ‘safe’. Nothing could be more delusional.

If you are interested in learning how to think critically about persons, relationships, conversation and how to ‘see’ persons and develop skills in positive engagement, you are welcome to come to the SPoR Convention in Canberra 15-19 September (https://spor.com.au/spor-convention-2025/).