Why Frontline Risk Assessments Aren’t Happening: The Definitions of Likelihood Are Wrong

If you know me or if you’ve read my book, then you’ll know that I’m very field-focused when it comes to my approach to workplace safety. I love teaching and equipping my frontline employees and supervisors with risk-based solutions. Well, I’m working on a presentation for the BCSP, and it’s getting me to document and formalize a lot of my strategies and conversations that have previously just been living in my head. Yes, writing Noncompliant Safety did the same thing, but this is now growing the list of tools that I can provide to supplement the ideas and practices written in the book. (Resources are free on my website).

One example of this is a frontline-focused risk matrix. I’ve provided my employees with information about using a risk matrix to calculate a risk score. But in the past, I used a standard risk matrix with the standard definitions. I would make it more applicable when presenting it to employees by providing my own commentary (speaking) about how to interpret the standard definitions for things like what “Improbable” and “Probable” meant. It usually landed pretty well, and I think my employees understood it. But the time has finally come for me to just create my own risk matrix with terminology and a method that is more accessible and everyone will relate to because it’s how our human brains already assess risk.

Specifically on the likelihood of an incident, it uses how our brain already perceives the likelihood of an incident. Here’s a hint: it is NOT statistics or a vague definition about how likely or possible something is.

It’s experience-and-story-based risk.

Why do we all perceive risk differently? I would suggest that it is because we all have different tolerances, yes, but those are informed by the experiences we’ve had. If you’ve experienced no incidents with something unsafe, then you won’t see it as a likely risk of injury. If you’ve seen something that resulted in a severe injury, then you will see the likelihood of that happening again. Same thing with stories about things that have happened; if you’ve heard that the guy doing the job before you got hurt, you’ll see it as a possibility to happen to you. I will concede that this is not always true, but that could be a communication problem in how we are talking about past incidents and the risks of the job. I will stand by the effectiveness when properly implemented because I would contend that most frontline employees and supervisors don’t have the statistics to make an informed decision about likelihood either. I’m a safety professional and I don’t have great statistics for the likelihood of specific risks! At least my method embraces the subjectivity and the fact that even with statistics your likelihood assessment will be based off your personal experience and knowledge level instead of pretending like the people performing the risk assessment have uniform experience, knowledge, and access to statistics.

If you’re worried that new people or someone unfamiliar with the task won’t know if it has happened before, THEN THAT’S THE PROBLEM! TELL THEM THE STORIES AND TEACH THEM ABOUT THE RISKS!

So, without further ado, here are the new definitions of likelihood for risk assessment based on how humans actually talk about and cognitively process risk:

You can see that the progression moves from: no story → imagined story → someone else’s story → our story → my story

Humans respond best to stories, not statistics, and the more personal it becomes, the more it progresses in our internal risk likelihood measurement. In particular, the frontline employees and supervisors responsible for the tasks being completed will appreciate these definitions because they don’t need a safety education to understand it. They don’t have to decode jargon, interpret vague definitions, or attempt to look up statistics that may or may not exist. Instead, they are being asked to rely on their experience, memory, and observation, which is exactly how frontline staff already judge risk and complete their work. This is true whether the safety profession wants to admit it or not: we are asking frontline workers to make judgement calls and rely on their own knowledge. This version of a risk matrix gives them a tool that they can immediately use to make better judgement calls and put their experience toward better understanding and assessing risk.

So, teach your employees about risk, and use language and examples they can understand. Then start giving them the stories that demonstrate the risk of the work they’re doing because it will help them understand the likelihood of a risk happening to them. But the way to do that is a topic for another day…