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Sheq risk managers must study ‘human error’

July 11th, 2011

Sheq risk managers know that the largest operational risk is human error. We should acknowledge that sheq practice itself is subject to human error.

That scapegoat of everything from shop floor loss to mining fatalities and disasters in process, drilling, shipping, aviation and space flight, is labeled human error, deficient awareness, non compliance, skills lack, at risk behaviour, workplace climate, and recently, corporate culture.

Since we are familiar with human error and root causes from incident reports, lagging indicators and leading indicators, we should study the triggers of individual and group behaviour, develop a more detailed terminology of ‘human’, as well as ‘error’, and a wider range of corporate culture change tools.

Our cultural tools would have to be rooted in African culture, and our cultural activation requires a continental effort. Swaziland, for example, is not an island, and Botswana could not sustain sheq culture while Zimbabwe struggles to find sustainable balance between government, business and labour.

To coin a phrase adapted from the irrefutable logic of wisdom literature and common sense, we have to remove the beam of corporate culture from our sheq eyes, before we could see the splinters of human error in management and employee eyes.

Crime and sheq need culture change

Criminologists have come to accept that criminality is manifested by communities, as much as by individuals. In statistical terms, a near predictable number of crimes are committed. Only the identity of individual perpetrators and convicted is unpredictable.

Crime statistics in communities could change, by change in a range of conditions and motivators, the most obvious being economy, opportunity, role models and leadership.

As in criminality, so in sheq. A near predictable number of fatalities and lost time injuries are manifested by industries, their final triggers being a miniscule percentage of the hundreds of thousands of incidents of human error, transgression, non compliance, and sanctioned risks committed in the name of work teams, managers, employers, owners, and ultimately in the name of communities and human society.

Only the circumstances, names of ‘culprits’, and names of the injured remain unknown in advance. Everything else, on a larger scale, is predictable enough for owners, investors and insurance underwriters to make a profit.

Over-population and greed drive risk tolerance

Rare exceptions to general human profit, when sheq and operational risk judgement errors cause large investment loss, are labeled disasters, like Renaissance exploration shipwrecks, a Hindenburg airship fire, a Titanic sinking, a Great Trek, Zulu War, Bambhata Rebellion, Pondo Revolt, World War, Rwandan genocide, Challenger space shuttle explosion, Texas Gulf Deepwater Horizon drilling blowout, and similar future ‘tragedies’.

Communally empowered leaders like Hitler or Mugabe could activate disasters. Strong leaders like Mahatma Gandhi could empower themselves and their community to activate culture change.

Disasters become incorporated in corporate and national cultures as myths of heroism and sacrifice, instead of part of the cost of desperate scrambles for gain driven by population change and climate change that they are.

Historic ‘lessons’ like shipwrecks of Nordic, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch and English exploration is converted into heroic poems like the Lusiades by Camoens.

Da Gama, Diaz, Drake and other sanctioned pirates are remembered, shipwrecked sailors who died or were rescued by Pondo and Korana and other African people are forgotten.

From these ‘lessons’ we learn only that desperate people accept desperate risk odds, and that human culture tolerates raising poor and destitute masses, and exposing them to harm.

The rare occasions when masses of elite are exposed to fatality, is war, waged usually for the greater good of a super elite on either side. Human culture is classist, cruel, unable to manage its mastery of earth, fertility and material success, using human error for restricted gain.

Sheq must activate culture

In this general cultural morass of risk, sheq managers have to activate African cultural elements to inspire employees, managers, owners, investors and societies to moderate their risk appetite, gain without pain, live and let live.

The best example of sheq cultural ethic becoming a national norm, is India, where a succession of peaceful empires, disrupted by occasional fierce and martial leaders, have led billions to pursue spiritual gain, at the cost of some temporary earthly riches.

Between human cultural extremes, vivid in the Renaissance contrast between exploration concession companies and African spiritually led empires like the former Ethiopia, Songhay and other cultures, and vivid in the current contrast between Chinese coal mining sweat shops and European unionised protectionism, sheq has to protect business and industry against its own excesses.

Sheq has a spiritual dimension

Thus sheq practice has arrived in the arena of corporate culture, and has to grapple with national and ultimately worldwide human culture. We have to chart a course among massive motivations and ambitions, and activate inherent human goodness, usually by persuasion, with some legal authority, and often against corporate will.

Our deceptively simple tools are awareness, training, dramatisation, cultural elements. The best culture activation tool is not for sale off the shelf, and one that we could only hope to influence board members to apply; creative and inspired corporate leaders motivated by more than CEO perks.

The kind of leaders we need are worth CEO salaries by activating more than some temporary attitudes, and improving more than triple bottom lines. We need business leaders with ambition to bring out the best in African human culture and change a community, perhaps even the world.

Human culture has to change

There is great expectation in esoteric circles that humanity would change for the better, or evolve, and of course we rarely do, and have not ‘evolved’ anywhere in the world for at least 200 000 years.

Generally static or erratic industrial sheq performance figures is evidence that health and safety results improve only in response to cultural change, in South Africa driven mostly by democratisation and attendant culture change. In many African countries sheq performance declined and improved after wars and civil wars, evidence that communal risk tolerance is easily heightened in desperate times, and slow to lower during peace.

Incidental drops in fatalities and injuries due to economic depression should not be considered as cultural improvements, since depression itself is part of the price that humanity pays for its economic ‘bubbles’, born of optimistic greed, the flip side of pessimistic risk tolerance.

Themes of some current lectures at religious and spiritual organisations in Africa reveal an awareness of the need for culture change; ‘Humanity, our next challenge’ (Theosophical Society, Johannesburg, 21 August 2011). ‘The role of disasters in world evolution’ (Theosophical Society, Johannesburg, 28 August 2011).

Sheq improvements in Africa, or anywhere, are not driven directly by disasters, incident investigations, and enforcement blitzes. Consider BP Texas City refinery disaster of a decade ago, and the recent BP Texas Gulf Deepwater Horizon disaster. Less well known and less studies African disasters confirm that employers, and societies, do not learn from history.

It takes social pressure on investors to force an industry, petrochemicals in the current example, to attempt to change its culture. It may require general industrial and business change to sustain petrochemicals culture change.

We need the kind of African CEOs that the mythologised King Solomon and Queen of Sheba were reputed to be, or that King Shaka would come to be in future myths.

We need sheq practitioners to be prophets and healers that support culture change leaders with ambitions larger than Napoleon of Hitler, like Mahatma Ghandi or Nelson Mandela.

We have first to remove a risk tolerance assumptions and cultural assumptions ‘beam’ from our eyes, statistics, and tools, and change our focus from ‘splinters’ in the eyes of employees, to risk beams in our corporate and human eyes.

When our leaders could imagine a better world, we would manage more healthy and safe workplaces.

* Edmond Furter is a freelance technical journalist, specialising in occupational sheq (Samtrac Cum Laude 2004, internal environmental auditor ISO 14001, NQA). He is a former editor of Safety Management, Occupational Risk Management, and ReSource, and sub-edited a Kagiso and Maskew Miller traumatology book, ‘Corporate Hyenas at Work’, for Dr Susan Marais-Steinman.

Comments

1. Timothy (2011-7-13)   

   Hello
   thanks for your posts about Occupational health and Safety Awareness, on sheq africa.
   I would like to be informed when, where and how often you do conduct these workshop on the same topic.
   Thanks

   Timothy – Uganda

Mr. Sinkamba Wisdom (2011-9-4)   
Kindly send me upb dates SHEQ manager,s study human errorunder standing of
Thabiso (2011-9-26)   
What is needed to qualify as sheq manager? I am currently a risk manager in the grain industry in South Africa.

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