Summary of contextual influence

I reflected on a personal experience at a ski resort to illustrate the critical impact of environmental and social context (or culture) on individual health and safety. I hope it is clear that the context in which we perform can have a dramatic effect on our behavior and attitude. A key part of this influential context is the behavior and attitude of other people. Think back to my daughter urging me on or the savvy skiers 1 shared a lift with who disdained using the restraining bar. 

Some organizational cultures inhibit the kinds of behavior needed to reduce industrial injuries. Getting employees involved in safety is difficult within the context of top-down rules, regulations, and programs supported almost exclusively with the threat of negative consequences. In contrast, employee involvement is much more likely with top-down support of safety processes developed, owned, and continuously improved upon by work teams educated to understand relevant rationale and principles. 

Metrics used to evaluate the safety performance of individuals, teams, and the organization as a whole have a powerful influence on context. Employee commitment, ownership, and involvement can increase or decrease depending on the evaluations employed. Injury statistics provide an overall estimate of the distance from a vision of injury free, but they are not a diagnostic tool for proactive planning. If used as the only index of safety achievement (or failure), injury-related outcome numbers can do more harm than good, alienating people rather than empowering them to actively care for safety. 

On the other hand, numbers that measure the quantity and quality of process activities related to safety performance provide the context needed to motivate individual and team responsibility. They direct continuous improvement of the process. Chapter 19 in Section 6 of this Handbook presents more details on developing a process-based evaluation system for continuously improving safety. The following chapters in Section 5 recommend a variety of additional strategies for cultivating a work culture that promotes actively caring behavior. 

Actively caring behavior is planned and purposeful. It can be direct or indirect and its focus is environment, person, or behavior. Actively caring that addresses the environment is usually easiest to perform because it does not involve interpersonal confrontation. Behavior-focused actively caring is often most proactive but is most difficult to carry out effectively because it attempts to influence ano er person s behavior in a nonemergency situation. Practically all of the research related to this concept has studied crisis situations in which a victim needs immediate assistance. This is essentially person-focused and reactive caring. 

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