Christopher Langer - Mindful Safety: A Multi-level approach to Improving Safety Culture and Performance

First edition published 2021

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2021 Christopher Langer

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ISBN: 978-0-367-56502-2 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-0-367-56505-3 (pbk)

ISBN: 978-1-003-09805-8 (ebk)

Typeset in Times

by codeMantra

This book is dedicated to all those who consider themselves part of the elf and safety brigade, but believe the profession has far more to offer than is often portrayed.
Heres to all the hard work you do to persuade your lords and masters that good health and safety practices prevent accidents and drive performance.
Remember that there is no business without health and safety, there is no safety without health and there is no health without mental health.

My experience with addressing complex problems in organisations suffering from fatalities, serious injuries and high incident rates involving levels of safety, has led me to recognise the importance of focusing on the quality of human relationships. Quality means the degree to which employees feel included and a sense of belonging. Employees frequently offer the information we need to prevent serious accidents or fatalities, but those in authority are unable to hear it or see it.

Chris Langers book helps us to understand the state of mind that must be achieved for everyone in the organisation to work towards listening with an open mind and maintaining the necessary awareness of their environment to spot both the human and technological signs of stress. To achieve this objective, he makes a strong case for integrating mindfulness in our safety and health toolkit through a combination of applied research, real-world examples and specific exercises.

Mindfulness has traditionally been an individual activity. Langer asks us to envision it in a much larger scope, using his M4 framework. This takes a holistic approach by looking at mindfulness on four levels: individual, relational, organisational and societal. I found the term relational mindfulness especially useful, because the quality of relationships, and how people interact with each other, are seen as holding the potential to prevent accidents. His aim is to utilise relationships at work to enhance safety awareness and enable better responses to the potential dangers.

He states:

This shifts the emphasis from attempting to change peoples behaviour according to the prevailing interpretation of what is safe or unsafe, to supporting activities that promote risk awareness.

Using M4 to analyse significant accidents, such as Air Florida Flight 90, Deepwater Horizon and Fukushima, provides new insights. Rather than placing blame, Langer looks at how increased mindfulness at each level can be applied at the

• Individual level how can I keep myself present and aware?

• Relational level whom are my actions affecting?

• Organisational level which departments need to be in communication?

• Societal level what external pressures are placing results or comfort ahead of peoples welfare?

From this perspective, the loss of situational awareness described in many accident investigations can be reduced with mindfulness training.

The Deepwater Horizon investigation traced back the overarching failure to management, but how exactly did the management fail? The commissions report spells out many reasons, but Langer delves into the complex issues that we struggle with every day. These are the same issues that will most likely show up in the next failure. How can we encourage people to speak up in order to prevent failures?