The risk assessment trap: Are risk assessments encouraging unsafe behaviours?

Working with SHE professionals, almost daily I meet people who are frustrated with other people’s behaviour, especially when it comes to safety. They feel that they have done everything to keep people safe and that ‘they’ won’t follow basic instructions and stop taking risks.

There are many reasons that people take risk at work, I want to explore one that is not often discussed.

The idea for this article came from a recent discussion on LinkedIn about risk and risk assessment. As with many things in safety, risk assessment is a logical process that is then applied by less than completely logical people.

Are risk assessments encouraging unsafe behaviours? One of the ways in which risk assessments break down is when it comes to human behaviour and people taking greater risks because a risk assessment has been completed.

This sounds like an oxymoron. People take more risks because we’ve done risk assessments!

Yes, unfortunately this is true. The answer isn’t to not do risk assessments, but to understand why they are taking the risk.