Moving Past Blame: A Game Changer for Developing & Maintaining a Positive Culture
The construction industry is a pressure-packed, dynamic, and fast-paced environment that carries substantial risks due to its complexity. Despite ongoing updates to regulations and improvements in safety processes—often implemented too late—accidents still occur. Unfortunately, investigations into incidents frequently focus on assigning blame to individuals rather than examining root causes to prevent future occurrences.
Understanding why a worker takes a specific action in a given situation, why an incident occurred, or identifying an underlying issue that hasn't led to an incident but could in the future, provides invaluable insights.
Human and Organizational Performance (HOP) offers these insights by analyzing events and incidents from a systems-based perspective. This approach highlights the importance of examining system design and operational realities. It also promotes a culture of learning from failures rather than punishing them.
When applied proactively, HOP principles foster transparency, shared accountability, and continuous learning. This approach not only strengthens the organization’s overall safety culture but also aligns it more effectively with the complexities of human behavior in challenging work environments, particularly in construction.
Conventional Approaches Often Don’t Get Long-Term, Sustainable Results
Traditional, legacy safety programs are often reactive and prioritize speed and compliance over understanding how their decisions and behaviors impact workplace culture and the safety of workers on-site. Historically, construction safety has depended on a hierarchical, rules-based, compliance-driven approach, which assumes that accidents can be avoided if workers adhere to the rules. This can be partially true, but the reality of construction safety and cultural undercurrents is much more complex. Some reasons why this is the case are defined below:
People are imperfect, and errors are inevitable. We make our own choices and determine our behaviors. Due to numerous factors, we predictably make mistakes, even among the most skilled and seasoned professionals.
Schedule pressure, stress, and complexity are predictable factors that influence decision-making. Other factors, such as tight deadlines, resource constraints, human interactions, and unpredictable site conditions, can also impact judgment.
Complacency with safety is a real challenge. Workers can become overly comfortable with existing conditions, and this mindset can challenge even the most aware and alert individuals.
Safety actions and processes are often reactive. Many organizations are reactive and only address hazards after incidents occur.
These limitations and shortcomings underscore the need for a proactive, system-based approach that prioritizes growth and learning over blame and punishment.
Blame Fixes Nothing but Can Damage Culture Deeply
HOP (Human and Organizational Performance) shifts how organizations approach safety. HOP is based on the idea that human error is not the root cause of failures; rather, it is a symptom of a larger and more complex issue. Instead of asking, "Who made the mistake?" and “Who can be blamed?” we change the narrative to the following line of questions: "What conditions allowed this to happen?" This shift in perspective encourages more imaginative, holistic, and systematic safety strategies that embrace human variability. Key principles of HOP related to construction safety include:
Errors happen. Mistakes are a part of human nature; therefore, we should try to avoid them and create systems that control or minimize their impact.
Blame fixes nothing. In fact, it can significantly damage an organization’s safety culture and encourage workers not to report hazards and incidents. HOP focuses instead on improving processes that enhance safety and protect workers.
There are numerous and wide-ranging drivers behind behaviors. Processes, procedures, and the work or home environment influence worker decisions and behaviors, so addressing systematic flaws leads to safer behaviors.
Learning from incidents is imperative. Organizations should investigate incidents and collect root causes without blaming workers. When done this way, the process can uncover true value in lessons that reinforce safety practices, improve processes, and benefit the safety culture.
Leadership responses matter more than reactions. How leaders respond to failures impacts whether workers feel comfortable reporting issues honestly and proactively, which can lead to essential learnings to prevent incidents.
Implementing HOP Doesn’t Mean Workers Aren’t Held Accountable
While human performance acknowledges that mistakes are inevitable, it does not mean that all mistakes are acceptable or can be justified solely by human performance factors. Human performance should not be used as an excuse to avoid holding individuals accountable for their actions. When human performance is used as a justification for not holding people accountable, it creates a situation where mistakes are easily brushed aside, rather than taking the time to understand the underlying conditions and systems that contributed to those mistakes. This lack of accountability prevents organizations from learning from errors and making necessary improvements.
If such a culture persists, it may lead to an environment where individuals do not adhere to high-performance standards, ultimately resulting in negative impacts on overall safety performance.
Practical Steps to Apply HOP Principles to Construction Safety
Let’s explore how embracing HOP principles can truly transform a safety culture for the better. Below are some practical steps that can be implemented to start the process of embracing HOP:
Initiate and encourage open conversations about safety among workers at all levels. Encourage open discussions about workplace challenges, hazards, and solutions without fear of reprisal.
Understand and accept that compliance is not “king.” Many organizations are primarily compliance-driven. They think their organizations will work safely if they comply with regulations. This is not necessarily the case. Compliance is only the starting point. Adhering to regulations is essential; however, following these regulations does not necessarily guarantee safety. Instead of being compliance-focused and rigidly following rules, adaptive thinking should be fostered, where workers assess risks and hazards dynamically. As the old proverb says, "Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime."
Improve system and process design. Analyze near misses and incidents thoroughly and systematically to identify root causes and weaknesses in processes, rather than pointing fingers or placing blame.
Empower workers by equipping them with the knowledge and independence needed to make safety-driven decisions in the moment. This will eliminate the “safety cop” mentality that can be prevalent in the construction industry, which can lead to a poor safety culture.
Eyes on the Future, Not the Past
It is essential to shift our focus from blaming workers to fostering meaningful change that leads to improved safety performance and prevents harm. By assessing and understanding potential systemic or process failures and encouraging open communication, we empower teams to prioritize safety. This leads to a more productive and injury-free work environment. Together, we can create a future where safety is not just a set of rules but a core value embedded in the fabric of our organization’s culture.
HOP is not about ignoring the purpose and value of compliance with safety regulations or worker accountability; it’s about creating realistic, holistic, and improved systems that acknowledge human limitations and drive change toward safer behaviors. By shifting from a focus on punishment to one centered on learning, organizations can cultivate a culture where safety is an ongoing conversation rather than just a checklist.
In the construction industry, where hazards are often present, the objective should not be perfection, but rather resilience, adaptability, and continuous improvement. The more organizations embrace HOP principles, the safer and stronger their teams will become long-term.
Further Reading and Helpful Resources
HOP in High-Risk Industries: Real-World Safety Lessons |
S1104_Human_and_Organizational_Performance_(HOP)-Another_way_to_think_about_safety (2).pdf
Human & Organizational Performance – A Path to Improvement
Safety: It's More Than Compliance
Safety Leadership: Neuroscience and human error reduction | 2015-10-25 | Safety+Health
