CQUniversity research currently underway to transform investigations in safety-critical industries, aims to assess how organisations’ poorly executed investigations process can contribute to ‘investigation trauma’, creating a psychosocial risk.
World-leading human factors and safety scientist Professor Anjum Naweed has received Australian government support to improve how high-risk industries investigate safety incidents.
Organisations conduct investigations into safety incidents in order to understand how they happened and prevent recurrence, however the processes utilised are often prosecutorial and blame-focused resulting in an investigation that is stacked against the employee. The focus on the human-error perspective fails to account for the systems and environments that affect the decisions and choices made in the workplace.
Professor Naweed said, “In Australia’s safety-critical industries, like transport, mining, health care, people go to work with the real risk of not coming home.”
“Management intolerance towards mistakes, and blame-focused investigation methods, mean that workers can begin their day fearful of incidents … and if something goes wrong, end it fearful of investigation.”
Often, fear of investigation prevents employees from reporting incidents and near misses, which creates a false sense of safety and limits the opportunity for improvement.
Employers should be working to ensure their incident investigations are effective and un-biased by looking at the language they use, they assumptions they make and aim for a culture of doing better instead of focussing on ‘who is to blame’.
Read more: Future Fellow tackling ‘investigation trauma’ to avert fear-fuelled catastrophe - CQUniversity