The Value of Vulnerability: How to Help your Workers Realize Their Risk

1. Session 756 The Value of Vulnerability: How to Help your Workers Realize Their Risk

2. The Value of Vulnerability: How to Help your Workers Realize Their Risk Anna H.L. Floyd, PhD, Member IEEE Professor of Psychology, Regis University Floyd Consulting LLC Denver, Colorado USAafloyd@regis.edu H. Landis Floyd II, PE, CSP, CMRP, Fellow IEEE Principal Consultant DuPont Wilmington, Delaware USA H-Landis.Floyd@dupont.com

3. The Current State of Safety Trainings “How could this have happened? We have the best safety record in our division. We’ve never had a lost time electrical injury at this plant. He is the most knowledgeable person in the crew. He has never had a recordable injury. I was not aware that my employees were exposed to a hazard with such severity. I don’t understand.” • A plant manager commenting during an arc flash injury investigation

4. The Current State of Safety Trainings “I’ve been in the business (electrical trade) for 25 years. Until today, I can honestly say that I’ve never understood the hazards I’ve worked with.” • An electrician at the end of an 8 hour hazard awareness seminar

5. Practical Experiencein establishing sense of vulnerability

6. Low Frequency/High Consequence Chart based on U.S. BLS Economic News Release, 2010

7. Improving Quality of Safety Trainings A worker’s understanding of his or her personal vulnerability … …impacts his or her adoption of safety protocol

8. The Current State ofSafety Trainings • Safety professionals understand importance of • training needs assessments • content design, and • delivery methods • We add: perceptions of vulnerability are key to workers’ adoption of safety protocol • Three points: • Why establishing a heighted risk perception is important • Provide examples of techniques • How you can assess the effectiveness of your risk perception training

9. Good Training Practices: What We Know • Adults learn differently • Do not respond well to content-focus education • Better techniques: role-playing, group projects, guided learning, storytelling, and peer coaching 1 • Trainers must first understand the workplace culture2 • Training through personal stories is effective 2 • Workplace safety training alone is not adequate enough to influence risk decision-making • “… more specialized (i.e., psychological or behavior-based) training is necessary for changing safety-related attitudes and behaviors” 3 1 Fanning 2011; 2 Cullen 2011; 3 Lehman 2009

10. Why Adjusting Risk Perceptions is Important A risk perception that is accurate but based on likelihood of incident may be inappropriate for some hazards

13. Why Adjusting Risk Perceptions is Important • In some cases… • Low frequency of non-fatal injury can create an illusion of control • A safety training and assessment that focuses only on a worker’s perceived risk likelihood without a focus on risk susceptibility and severityis an disservice to our workers

14. Dimensions of Risk To fully understand “risk perception”, we need to look at several dimensions of risk.

15. Development of Risk Perceptions • Past experiences readily available in memory • Self or others 1 • Past experiences with strong affect (emotion) • Illusion of control 2 • we rate our own risk as lower than ‘general population’ 3 1Bandura 1976; 2 Taylor 1988; 3Sjöberg 2000

16. Risk Perceptions as a Catalyst for Behavior Change

17. Health Belief Model Belief in Health Threat Susceptibility to Threat. “I will be hurt if I don’t take precautions.” Severity of Threat. “Getting hurt would be serious.” Protective Behavior Benefits. “Adopting protective behavior will help me.” Barriers and Costs. “The barriers and costs of adopting protective behavior do not outweigh the advantages.” Belief that Protective Behavior Reduces Threat Janz& Becker 1984

18. Behavioral Attitude Theory of Planned Behavior Behavior Subjective Norms Intention how one perceives the possible outcomes of the behavior; how one evaluates these outcomes Perceived Behavioral Control what one’s family and friends think of the behavior; how important the opinions of one’s family and friends are to the individual “self-efficacy” does one believe he/she has the ability to follow through with the new behavior? Aijzen 1991

19. Models of Behavior Change • Does a person perceive him/herself to be at risk? • Does a person perceive that adopting a particular behavior will lessen that risk?

20. Point 1 Summary As theoretical models of behavior change illustrate… establishing a perception of vulnerability is an important precursor to change.

21. experiences

22. vs. Bill Russell Dad James Uncle Ray Aunt Edith Statistics vs. Personal Stories

23. Establishing Vulnerability: Others’ Stories • Experiences and opinions of other people play a key role in how we perceive appropriate actions and behaviors • Subjective Norms factor in The Theory of Planned Behavior 1 • Social Learning Theory 2 • Other people can be characters in a narrative, or story 3 • Journalism, literature, testimonials • Characters fictional or real 4 • The more similar people perceive themselves to be to a narrative character, the more likely they are to be persuaded by the narrative itself 5 • 1 Ajzen, 1985/1991; 2Bandura, 1977; 3 Cullen, 2011; 4 Kreuter, et al. , 2007; Hinyard & Kreuter, 2007

24. Establishing Vulnerability: Others’ Stories Stories that depict only the actions of the incident… we “blame the victim” and distance ourselves Stories with references to personable characteristics (family, hobbies) we put “ourselves” in “their” shoes

25. Point 2 Summary In addition to statistics, use stories of personal relevance to put ourselves “in their shoes” and establish vulnerability.

26. Assessing Your Training:Survey Design • Self-report questionnaires assessing risk perceptions are quite developed • E.g., smoking and cancer 1 • E.g., dermal exposure 2, 3 • Include items about the 3 dimension of risk perceptions (see figure) • Response options on 5-point rating scale or Likert scale • Low Likelihood to High Likelihood, or from Strongly Disagree to Strongly Agree. 1 Weinstein et al. 2005; 2Geer et al. 2006; 3 Rundmo 1996).

27. Assessing Your Training:Survey Implementation • Implement surveys at different time points • E.g., a week before training, just after training, and several weeks after training • Statistical tests (e.g., t-tests) indicate whether risk perceptions shifted over time* * A control group is needed to know whether perceptions shifted as a direct result of training

28. Point 3 Summary Assess your workers’ risk perceptions before and after trainings using self-report questionnaires. Include all three dimensions of risk in your survey instrument(likelihood, susceptibility, severity). Collaborate with a survey designer and statistician.

29. Three Considerations forANSI Z490.1 ANSI/ASSE Z490.1-2009 Criteria for Accepted Practices in Safety, Health, and Environmental Training documents proven best practices. • Add the following references to Annex A References: Hinyard, L.J. & Kreuter, M.W. (2007). Using narrative communication as a tool for health behavior change: A conceptual, theoretical, and empirical overview. Health Education & Behavior, 34(5), 777-792.

30. Three Considerations forANSI Z490.1 • In Annex B Training Course Development Guidelines, insert a new item C in section B.7.2 Write Learning Objectives: • Determine the need to establish clear understanding of the hazard(s), potential injury or illness severity and consequences, and personal vulnerability as precursors to training on rules, procedures or task requirements.

31. Three Considerations forANSI Z490.1 • In Annex C Safety, Health and Environmental Trainer’s Checklist, section C.5 Key Points of Delivery insert a new section between ‘Introduction’ and ‘Main Body’, referring to the above objective: Injury/Illness consequences – Establish a sense of personal vulnerability. This is where consideration should be given for methods to make the material personally meaningful to workers in order to establish a sense of vulnerability. Scenarios (from real events when possible) should be included in story form, and with detail that allows workers to project themselves into the storyline from the viewpoint of the individual who incurred the accident or injury.

32. References Heinrich, H.W., Peterson, D., & Roos, N. (1980). Industrial accident prevention – A safety management approach, McGraw Hill, New York. Hinyard, L.J. & Kreuter, M.W. (2007). Using narrative communication as a tool for health behavior change: A conceptual, theoretical, and empirical overview. Health Education & Behavior, 34(5), 777-792. Janz, N. K., & Becker, M. H. (1984). The health belief model: A decade later. Health Education & Behavior, 11(1), 1-47. Lehmann, C. C, Haight, J.M., & Michael J.H. (Spring 2009). Effects of safety training on risk tolerance: An examination of male workers in the surface mining industry. Journal of SH&E Research, 6(1). Merli, C. M. (July 2011). Effective training for adult learners, Professional Safety, 49-57. Rundmo, T. (1996). Associations between risk perception and safety. Safety Science, 24(3), 1996. Slovic, P., Finucane, M. L., Peters, E., & MacGregor, D. G. (2004). Risk as analysis and risk as feelings: Some thoughts about affect, reason, risk, and rationality. Risk Analysis, 24(2), 311-322. Sjöberg , L. (2000). Factors in risk perception, Risk Analysis, 20 (1), 1–12. Taylor, S.E., & Brown, J. D. (1988). Illusion and well-being: A social psychological perspective on mental health. Psychological Bulletin, 103(2), 193-210. Watson, D. & Clark, L.A. (1994). THE PANAS-X: Manual for the positive and negative affect schedule - expanded form. Retrieved online August 10, 2012 from www.psychology.uiowa.edu/faculty/clark. Weinstein, N.D. (1989). Effects of personal experience on self-protective behavior. Psychological Bulletin, 105, 31-50. Weinstein, N. D., Marcus, S. E., & Moser, R. P. (2005). Smokers’ unrealistic optimism about their risk. Tobacco Control, 14, 55-59. Doi: doi:10.1136/tc.2004.008375 Anderson, M. & Denkl. M. (April 2010). The Heinrich Triangle - Too simplistic a model for HSE management in the 21st century?, Society of Petroleum Engineers 2010 International Conference on Health Safety and Environment in Oil and Gas Exploration and Production, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Ajzen, I. (1985). From intentions to actions: A theory of planned behavior. In J. Kuhl and J. Beckman (Eds.), Action-control: From cognition to behavior (pp. 11-39). Heidelberg, Springer: 1985. Ajzen, I. (1991). The Theory of Planned Behavior. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 50, 179-211. Ajzen, I. & Fishbein, M. (1980). Understanding attitudes and predicting social behavior. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall. Bandura, A. Social learning theory. Oxford, England: Prentice-Hall, 1977. Becher, M H., & Maiman, L. A. (1975). Sociobehavioral determinants of compliance with health and medical care recommendations. Medical Care, 13(1), 10-24. Brewer, N. T., Chapman, G. B., Gibbons, F. X., Gerrard, M., & McCaul, K. D. (2007). Meta-analysis of the relationship between risk perception and health behavior: The example of vaccination. Health Psychology, 26( 2), 136-145. Cawley, J.C., & Brenner, B.C. (2012). Occupational electrical injuries in the U.S., 2003-2009, 2012 IEEE IAS Electrical Safety Workshop, Daytona Beach, Florida, USA. Clemens, P. L., & Simmons, R. J. (1998). Safety system and risk management, a guide for engineering educators. U. S. Department of Health and Human Services (NIOSH) Publication No. 96-37768. Cullen, E. T. (2011, March). Effective training: A case study from the oil & gas industry. Professional Safety, 40-47. Fanning, F. E. (2011, August). Engaging learner techniques to make training stick, Professional Safety, 42-48. Finucane, M. L., Alhakami, A., Slovic, P., & Johnson, S. M. (2000). The affect heuristic in judgments of risks and benefits. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 13(1), 1-17. Geer, L. A., Curbow, B. A., Anna, D. H., Lees, P. S. J., & Buckley, T. J. (2006). Development of a questionnaire to assess worker knowledge, attitudes and perceptions underlying dermal exposure. Scand J Work Environ Health, 32(3), 209-218.

33. Session 756 Anna H.L. Floyd, afloyd@regis.edu H. Landis Floyd II, H-Landis.Floyd@dupont.com The Value of Vulnerability: How to Help your Workers Realize Their Risk

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