Have you ever blamed a plant for not growing how you want it to? Maybe it's drooping and sad to look at. Maybe it's not as green or colourful as you would like. But did you ever stop to think that the plant might not be to blame? Maybe you didn't water it enough, or maybe the soil wasn't right!
In the same way, it's easy to blame employees for having incidents. We might think that they're not paying attention, or that they're not following procedures. But the truth is, there are often many other factors at play - if only we can get past our biases!
Blaming the plant for not growing, or the individual for having an incident is a quick and easy way to avoid taking responsibility. But it's not a productive way to solve the problem!
The Dangers of Blaming
If a plant isn't growing, we need to figure out why. Is it a lack of water? Poor soil? A pest infestation? Once we know the cause(s), we can take steps to fix it.
The same is true for humans and incidents. If an employee has an incident, we need to investigate to find out why, we need to remain curious and learn! Was it a mistake? A lack of training? Lack of capacity in the system to absorb error?
Blaming Doesn't Solve Anything!
Blaming doesn't solve anything. It just makes people feel bad and resentful. It also creates a climate of fear and distrust, which can make it even harder to prevent incidents from happening.
Instead of blaming, we need to focus on understanding the cause(s) of the problem. Once we know the cause(s), we can take steps to fix it and/or increase the capacity to absorb the error to prevent injury or death. This is the most effective way to prevent incidents from happening in the future.
How to Avoid Blaming
So how can we avoid blaming others? Here are a few tips:
Be curious, not judgmental. When something goes wrong, don't immediately jump to conclusions. Instead, try to understand the situation from the other person's perspective. If this one person interpreted the situation in this one way that led to the incident, the likelihood is others will interpret it the same way!
Focus on the problem, not the person. The goal is to solve the problem, not to punish someone. Assume good intent and work from there.
Work hard to identify and acknowledge your biases. Hindsight Bias and Fundamental Attribution Error, are just two of the biases we all have which can lead to us blaming and not improving. Do you know what your biases are?
Create a culture of safety. When people feel safe to speak up and admit mistakes and near-misses, you are more likely to prevent incidents from happening in the future. This is because you have real and effective data to work with, from the very people who are dealing with the organisational hazards every day!
In Conclusion
Blaming is very rarely the answer unless the intended consequence was one of deliberate sabotage or malice – and in those cases, you have an HR and legal issue, not a safety issue! Blaming is a natural human reaction, but it's important to remember that it's not productive, or even a recognised control for a hazard! When we blame others, we're not solving the problem, we're just making the other person feel bad. As Todd Conklin says “We can blame and punish, or we can learn and improve – but we can’t do both!”
It's important to focus on understanding the cause(s) of the problem and taking steps to prevent it from happening again whilst building more capacity in your systems to absorb human error – which will never go away!
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