Posted By Kieran J Duignan
A recent issue of Professional Safety (the monthly magazine of the American Society of Safety Engineers) carried an article on using a well-validated personality inventory to assess managers, to distinguish those more inclined to give attention to safety from those less inclined.

I was recently asked about organisation in the UK or Ireland that use psychological measurement for this purpose or to select front-line employees with habits that inline them toward safe rather than unsafe behaviour at work.

If you know of an organisation who use personality assessment for either of these purposes and are willing to describe how they do it, I should be very appreciative if you would put me in touch with the relevant individuals.

I can be reached at 020 8654 0808 or kieran@simplyenabling.com

Posted By Kieran J Duignan
As your observation is not supported by any evidence, it is to be understood as an uninformed opinion. If that's where you're at, Good luck.

If you have any relevant evidence, let's know what is is or offer an intelligent critique on what Scott Geller wrote, rather than rather sad, juvenile abuse.

Posted By Kieran J Duignan
Rob

Your insults are unwelcome and unnecessary.

You didn't 'touch a nerve' so much as prompt me to wonder about your motivation, I'm sorry to have to say.

As leaders in behaviorual safety - Scott Geller, Tom Krause and Dom Cooper - indicate, validated personality measurement is scientific like other areas of professional psychology.

I am uninterested in psychobabbble, whatever you mean by such gobbledegook.

I've made no comment about psychoanalysis and know of no research that either supports or challenges your assertions.

As for your claim, ' This work tries to imply that you can judge people before the fact', it is unclear what you are referring to.If you wish to learn a little of the relevant facts before abusing gratuitously, Robert Hogan's 'Personality and the Fate of Organisations', published by Lawrence Earlbaum Associates, 2007 may throw a little light in your darkness to the extent that you're interested in reality more than being gratuitously hostile.

Posted By Merv Newman
Kieran, Kieran

please, please don't get too annoyed with ROB. Face to face he's a nice guy doing an extremely dangerous job.

I know that he may have seemingly short opinions of "psychobabble" but this could be just a reflection of his natural reaction to the word "duck"

And don't try, please, to get him restarted on secondary smoking.

Merv

Posted By CFT
About 8 years ago I was involved with a Blue Chip company running these programmes throughout the management structure, it was to see who may have skills over and above their current job description, it also involved the safety department; after being around on the contract and being heavily involved in the process I came to the conclusion the 6 figure sum that was charged was a complete waste of money. It is the only real experience or knowledge I have on this subject and this one time did involve me for many many hours; with that experience and just that one in mind, I agree with Rob on this occasion 100%.

CFT

Posted By Peter Leese
Rob ;-)))))

Posted By Jean
Hello Kieran

What about pilots? Both in civil and in the services. What about those who diffuse bombs for a living? I can't help but think that they must undergo some form of personality/psychometric testing to estabish their approach to safety.

It might be helpful if safety specialists in these areas could have some input into your queary.

Regards

Jean

Posted By John Murgatroyd
So, faced with a particularly irritating unexploded bomb, you would use the scientific and socio-psychological approach towards safety: Shout at it and tell it to bu**er-off and leave you alone ?
Or maybe just talk softly and sweetly towards it and it will disarm itself ?
Maybe the socio-scientific-psychological approach doesn't work in some arenas of safety then ?

Of course, if you knew the personality of the person who designed it you may have an advantage.....or not.

Hmm, levity as a personality trait in occupational health and safety management....I see a research paper developing....better look for euro-grant status...

Posted By Jean
At the risk of being pedantic, I consider that I was being helpful, I don't know of any organisations that do undertake these tests, but thinking outside the box, considered some areas that might be worth persuing.

Having spoken to Kieran in the past and found him very helpful, I suspect that he would not be shy of actually phoning similar organisations up to explore his queries.


Jean

Posted By garyh
Many successful organisations select people both internally and externally using a competence based process. This involves setting relevant competence criteria (eg "Strategic thinking", "problem solving", "influencing skills" to name but a few). The relevant criteria are assigned to each role then (usually in an interview) the person is asked to give examples of how they have demonstrated these competencies. Usually each competency has a set of sample questions provided which you can adapt for the role.

The great advantage of this system is that it is fair and rational - each candidate can be scored against each question. It also asks about what people have actually done - not what they might do in hypothetical circumstances. There is an element of personality testing in all this.

However, true personality type testing is different but related and also, if done effectively, useful in my opinion.

I note with dismay that some people tend to denigrate things like this without having any real experience of it; we should not in my view, as professionals, dismiss other areas (eg HR) just because we lack knowledge of them ourselves.

To answer the original question, I believe that ALL employees in positions of responsibility, including Safety personnel, should have a personality assessment as part of the selection process.

Posted By Glen Coe
is this the sort of process you are looking for?

http://stepchangeinsafet...sourcesitem.aspx?ID=3339

Cheers

Posted By John Murgatroyd
And for every supporter of said practice, there is another who considers it of no value.
While there is certainly some benefit to not employing a raving maniac, or someone with clinical depression in human resources (although they may well develop said malaise during the course of time), there is little evidence that enlisting staff based on just the use of a psychology-based policy is of any value.

Posted By B Smart
Hi Kieran,

I once worked on an oil rig operated by a Company called Transocean (http://www.deepwater.com) and they operated a personality system called 'Colours'. The idea was to assign everyone with two colours which reflected their personality. Once seeing a persons colours you could have a better understanding of that person and know how to approach them in an understanding manner. The Colours Program was safety biased as there was a method of identifying how someone could possibly be hurt/injured through their personality, e.g one person might rush in to help another during a hazardous operation and another person might be distracted a lot of the time etc.

At first I personally thought that this program was a lot of "psychobabble making some people a lot of money for nonsense" but after reading some of the responses from this thread I can actually say that I could predict different peoples colours and so know how to approach them in the ways they need to be approached. The down side of the colours program is that you need to be 'tested' a few times as your 'colours' constantly change, depending on whats going on in you life etc.

Hope this is of some help.

B. Smart

Posted By B Smart
Good question Shane, but Ugly Joe won't be much use to me if he has a hand missing. It really boils down to competency doesn't it. Or am I in the minority...

B. Smart