Why is psychological safety essential for incident investigations?

In this article, Kevin Hard, shares his thoughts on why psychological safety is essential for incident investigation.

Let me start with a question. What would you rather be involved in: an ‘incident investigation’ or a ‘learning review’?

As we know, language influences our behaviours and the language we hear, and use reflects the culture of the organisation. i.e. Is it safe to talk about safety, or even any concerns we have?

Your culture determines your outcomes

If you really have a just and fair culture where root cause and learning is the objective, then the outcomes will enable continuous improvement and an increase in input of concerns for you to learn even more. Conversely, your outcomes determine your culture. People will start to believe that they can speak out without fear of retribution, that their input is valuable and that mistakes are now improvement opportunities. There becomes a shared expectation that teammates (including leaders) will not embarrass, reject or punish them for sharing ideas, taking risks or soliciting feedback. They will feel valued, and valuable, key ingredients in a culture of care.

What culture are you promoting?

You may be tempted to just do the easy thing?

• Who was involved?

• Did they break any rules or work outside of the agreed procedure?

• Write up your report and put it down to human failure, Job done, less work, less stress and more time to get on with the important stuff.

• Have you improved anything?

• Are people more likely to report incidents in the future?

• Have you reinforced people’s perception of a blame culture?

• Have you had a positive impact on the safety culture of your organisation?

Ask yourself - Is that inspiring? Have you learned anything? Do you feel good about yourself?

Investigators need to recognise the impact they, and the language they use, have on other people’s perception of the Safety Culture / Culture in general and the direction its going.

Remember, if people feel psychologically safe, if they feel cared for, they will share more and you will learn more and your key metrics on safety, wellbeing etc. will continually improve.

“The most valuable asset is our people”.

That isn’t a quote from Richard Branson or any of the myriad of 20th century psychologists but from Heraclitus, a Greek philosopher from 500 B.C. It seems nowadays we have to be told by ‘experts’ that this is a truism or through some academic research. It’s simple, taking care of your people is the right, smart and actually the legal thing to do.

Simply, to be successful, psychological safety, through a just, fair culture is essential. That means no finger pointing, no shouting, no quick fix and moving on but listening to understand, sharing the learning and looking at new ways to be better, constantly.

‘In the long run, companies that care about and focus on their people are among the most successful and competitive in the world’.