I have been doing some research on why people take short cuts and carry out unsafe acts when everything is in place for them to succeed (no time pressure, SSoW, competence, experience etc.).

It got me thinking about whether the more experience someone has and the more repetitive the job the more likely someone is to take short cuts.

For example we all sometime fail to use a pedestrian crossing.  We know there is a pedestrian crossing.  We know how to use a crossing and that they are there for our safety. We understand that being hit by a car could be fatal. We know the process well.  Press the button, wait for the green light, look and then walk across.  We are not in a rush.  So why do we still take the risk, ignore the crossing and dash across?

I was thinking of implementing a complacency assessment into pre-job briefs. 

Complacency Risk = Experience x Confidence x Repetitiveness of the job

Does anyone have any experience of this?  It would be good to get the conversation going as I am keen to learn from others.

Many Thanks

As Wailes says lots of information out there about Human Factors - i would also look at the research that has been done on Risk Perseption.

Also worth reading the articles published by IOSH presidenet from last year Andrew Sharman. This is an area where i think he is one of the leading experts. He uses Swis Cheese theory to do more than just look at accidents.

Based purely on anecdotal knowledge rather  than any sort of scientific research I would suggest that  experience in itself  nether makes you complacent nor competent.  It depends how you assimilate that experience. You might find that you are able to ”get away with it” for years and ride your luck; that could be the lesson you take away from you experience.   A bad experience early on in your career might focus your mind on the health and safety of a process or procedure and lead to you adopting more cautious approach. On the other hand, some people think it is all down to  “luck “ and any accidents are just bad luck.  

Originally Posted by: achrn

Originally Posted by: AcornsConsult

Not sure I’d agree that experience leads to complacency per se. Inexperience could equally be complacent through limited or lack of appreciation of the consequences amongst other reasons

I think lack of appreciation of the consequences is different to complacency.  I think the 'complacency' label is specifically for the people that know what to do, know how to do it, know the potential consequences of not doing it, and still don't.

Crossing the road is an excellent example. 

My company's head office is across the road from a supermarket. Most people buy their lunch there. Door to door (crow flies, crossing diagonally across an A-road) is about 50m, and the route via a pelican crossing is about 100m - so an extra 30 seconds walking.  How many people go via the pelican? I reckon about 5% use the crossing.  Even I don't use the crossing (most days).  All these people know the green cross code, know the crossing is there, know they could be killed, and still leg it across (normally diagonally - breaking another of the rules they knew when they were six). This is complacence.

I think familiarity does tend to complacency for some people (but not necesarily everyone).I have no idea, however, how you identify the people particularly prone to complacency, or how you prevent people getting complacent.

Quite agree with your onthe last part, although we may continue to debate the road corssing as a good/bad example.  Perhaps the language of the OP could be tweaked - complacent not being the right one when used tih experience (That particular task or generic tasks) and confidence (Is acutally capable of doing it or not capable but thinks they are) (both vague) and unsure if repetitiveness (Is twice in 5 years repetative and relevant, well yes it may be if it was soimething like moving house but less so if it was crossing the road) is equally vague 

What is really interestingabout the OP is the topic being opened for thought and discussion and evaluating the context in which it could be used so as to have some value.

Isn't it more about "familiarity" than experience? When people assume they already know how to do a task they are less likely to percieve their actions when actually taking on the task. It becomes automatic. Safety checks are done, but don't things can be missed because they are on auto-pilot and already moved on to the next action.

This can sometimes be beneficial though. If you can instill "fail to safe" checks into a person's psyche then it can save lives.

Way back, when I was doing my NatCert, one of our lecturers had a favourite expression - people are not stupid, they're just trying to get the job done (although my experience since has suggested to me that this might not altogether be true). Added to this, if someone doesn't see a compelling reason for doing something, sooner or later they won't do it. I have always adopted the principle that it is just as important, if not more so, to explain why something needs to be done, as to simply explain what is to be done.

slightly disagree with the statement that complancency doesn't bring a higher incident rate in general it does - you can call it several things...you will already have HSG 48 so what you are trying to do is a Human Factors risk assessment in your general RA which in my view unless done by a HF professional is a dangerous from liability but what you need to look at for your own background is the assessment with Peronal Influencing Factors... I would only recommend going down this route for high hazard and defined safety critical tasks...

https://www.hse.gov.uk/humanfactors/resources/risk-assessment.htm

If you need more detail please feel free to PM...it can work but you need to be careful how you implement it...we do it with frontline critical care...

very good :)

Clearly another shout about how little EHS professionals know about Occupational Psychology...and a very draconion or daily fail way of looking at this which isn't helpful for the poster....yes it is all about the individual no matter what position they hold in that chain...I am sorry that your organisation or your experience means that you haven't experienced the benefit of the correct use of Human factors assessments...

Now me seeing that post in your position I would have reflected and reseached the background to know what I am actually talking about...before throwing a stone...

And on respect for the profession...well I am not sure comments like this gain respect..and from what I can see there are good and bad in all professions however respect only comes from doing a good job...

I have recently been called to review a serious incident involving an injury to a construction worker written by 2 experienced and Charted members of this profession....both blamed the individual and missed the technical failings in the management chain and the equipment installation...so I will stick to my slide rule and technical view on life because in doing so I am actually saving lives not just complaining about being blamed for something  I actually did!

doesn't beat a Masters in Psychology :) :)  

so bearing in mind your behavioural safety qualification - what part of your qualification matched time in motion with Human factors and made you so aggressively opposed to it?