As a leader, have you ever wondered why people are still getting hurt when your organisation has a really good Safety Management System, people understand the hazards and know how to avoid contact with them; everybody knows safety is important and they genuinely want to stay safe?
Cristian Sylvestre, in his book Third Generation Safety: The Missing Piece, outlines a different model for incident causation based on the work by Larry Wilson in the 1990s. Research revealed that in 95% of incidents one of four states of mind or “attention disruptors” are present – rushing, frustration, fatigue and complacency. These attention disruptors lead to inattention which then increase the risk of an incident.
It would not be right to conclude that whenever the four attention disruptors and inattention are present that an incident results. Neuroscience has discovered that 95% of what we do is driven by our subconscious mind – primarily by the patterns we have established over time associated with the four attention disruptors.
As Cristian states in his book, “although our conscious mind is working constantly, it is not actively involved in the many things we do in the moment”. Our conscious mind does help to keep us safe, but we must engage our subconscious mind to foster personal safety because it drives so much of what we do.
How do we engage our subconscious mind to foster personal safety? By developing safer skills and habits.