“Zero Harm” - a Healthy or Risky Catchphrase?
The “ZERO HARM” catchphrase widely used in the Mining Industry refers to the mindset that no harm must come to anyone in the workplace.
There are different views in the industry about the value of this phrase. Over the last few years, there have been several contrasting sentiments ranging from “zero harm makes zero sense” to the “zero harm mindset creates a positive safety culture”.
As Geotechnical Engineers we make decisions based on the safety philosophies of each individual company. This ultimately affects the way we approach risk-related challenges.
Although the intent of a “Zero Harm” policy aims to align the safety values of a company, it could be argued that this is more suitable as a PR strategy for the public image of the company and that this may have several negative impacts on technical personnel and management internally. These impacts could include:
Zero harm implies zero risk, which is not a sound engineering principle, and therefore many engineers do not take this philosophy seriously. It could then be argued that the risks may not be taken as seriously as they should be.
The statement is too broad, and therefore does not allow for SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, Time-based) goal setting. This makes it difficult to take steps toward improvement.
Over time a failure is inevitable, and any failure would fall below the “zero” expected results. This creates a company culture where failure is expected and excused.
It creates a culture of deceit. Since zero-failure is the expected outcome, the occurrence of failures could be under-recorded or not recorded at all. A good example of this is what happened with Volkswagen in the emission scandal.
Engineers cannot use zero harm for design, and therefore must base designs on their own previous experience, which might not align with the company’s risk policies.
Zero harm creates a zero-risk bias. Zero-risk bias is a tendency to prefer the complete elimination of a risk in a sub-part even when alternative options produce a greater reduction in the overall risk. How many safety procedures aim to remove a specific risk, just to introduce a new bigger risk?
Alternatively, consider the situation where management accepts that there is a residual risk associated with its day to day running. The company uses a regulation like ALARP (as low as reasonably possible) to determine an Acceptable Risk Level. They communicate this risk level to all relevant parties involved in the management of risk. The impact on technical staff would be:
It ensures that SMART goals can be set. Since the goals are realistic, engineers can put a plan in place to achieve the required safety level.
Under a zero-harm policy, management considers all risks as undesirable, and therefore technical staff must reduce all risks simultaneously. Under an acceptable risk policy, only the risks above the acceptable risk level are considered unacceptable, which helps to focus effort on the most critical risk factors.
When all risks are within the acceptable range, there is more time available for technical staff to improve other aspects of a safety-driven culture.
It creates a culture where openness is encouraged, and where all failures are reported with an emphasis to learn from them moving forward.
A drawback to using this approach is that from a public stance, the idea of an “Acceptable Risk Level” can be alarming to many. In an ideal world, there should not be any level of risk that is deemed acceptable, but unfortunately in our line of work and within the mining industry as a whole, we know that risk is inevitable. It is how you see it, focus on it and strive to continuously improve it that matters most.
Designing for risk requires us to describe the risk accurately, but also to aim for reasonable risk levels. We can only achieve this in a culture where risk is discussed openly, and information is shared freely to overcome the challenges that are unique to mining.
This topic can generate a lot of talk and debate, and I’d love to know about your stance; what are your thoughts on Zero Harm? Comment below.
From Porter et. al. (2019)