Resilience - Individual Skills

[putteesinmyhands]

The give-away was the "a risk is a risk" sentence, people like that make my blood pressure soar

People should be encouraged to air their concerns otherwise hazards and risks may be overlooked.

The controlling factor is what constitutes an acceptable risk and, more specifically, who determines what is acceptable.

If FF is the person who signs off the Risk Assessment, the nurse has a choice of wearing the low-risk PPE or withdrawing his/her labour. If somebody else signed it off, they are the point of contact to resolve any concerns.

 

[Ravers]

That's a good point about the "tick-box" approach, and putting things into pigeon holes of handling, height, fire, etc.,

Surely better to teach "first principles" - stop, look, think logically through each situation. You might spot things that don't have a box to tick.

One of the things that the nuclear industry does very well is H&S.

Chernobyl was a massive wake up call that made everyone smarten up a bit.

A “questioning attitude” is one of the things that is instilled in everyone now.

Doesn’t matter if you work in the canteen or you’re the chief engineer. Everyone has the right to question things and say “is this safe?”

Sometimes it’s the most junior member of the team who spots a problem. Those of us who’ve watched Chernobyl will realise that had the people on the factory floor been empowered to question what was going on, the disaster probably wouldn’t have happened.

We’ve probably all heard that Qantas is the airline with the best safety record, this is largely down to Aussies having a questioning attitude from birth. It’s part of their culture. You can’t imagine an Aussie co-pilot biting his lip while the guy next to him makes a fatal mistake.

Conversely Japan used to have a very high rate of pilot error crashes for the opposite reason. Japanese culture is very hierarchical. You do what you’re told, obey the rules, never question your superiors or elders. There are various accounts of Japanese planes stoving in because the co-pilot dared not question the pilot.

Of course these attitudes aren’t just confined to the cockpit. We see it in the workshops and engineering facilities too. A maintenance error might be overlooked because a junior member was scared to show up the bloke who’d made the error.

How do we instil a questioning attitude in Britain? Can we teach it? It’s a fine line between creating a real benefit and creating a nation of self entitled gobby pricks.

It certainly doesn’t exist in the military. A private would never question an officer or NCO. There was the fairly recent case of the killick stoker on HMS Bulwark who climbed into a lift shaft while shitfaced and was killed while the junior lads around him just watched. All it would’ve taken is one of those lads to say “hold up shippers, this might not be such a great idea” and he’d probably be alive right now.

It’s also instilled in us not to listen to our subordinates. We know best and don’t want to be shown up by them. Again, in the nuclear world, it’s instilled in managers to look at information from every source and act on it.

Great, John, I told you! Geez! The difference between a duck and a co-pilot

This is apparently a classic but new to me: a training video recreating the issues in the cockpit from a runway overrun in 1976. The question was whether to land downwind on a foggy runway in icing…

fearoflanding.com

 

[putteesinmyhands]

It certainly doesn’t exist in the military. A private would never question an officer or NCO.

...

It’s also instilled in us not to listen to our subordinates. We know best and don’t want to be shown up by them.

Different units... We spoke to each other about any concerns.

 

[P.O.N.T.I]

Many lacking basic common sense let alone skills based on observations this morning.

Decided on big walk this morning so out at about 7.45. And soon the sun was shining bright. Bugger, says I.

Mrs B tells me not to be so miserable

"You'll see" I mutter

Part of route on way back involved passing through woodland and heathland which have car parks.

And sure enough by time we hot there at 09.45 area was crammed with families bimbing about because they have sod all else to do.

It has been a bit damp recently. In fact wet. Liquid mud aplenty

Many obvious skill gaps on display, and these are just the ones that Mrs B proceeded to get wound up about

1. Footwear selection (Expensive trainers. Won't wearing those again)

2. Choice of clothing (White jeans! Is she completely stupid?)

3. Use of baby buggies not equipped for, let alone with, balloon tyres or tracks ( What is wrong with these people?)

The baby buggy spectacle did make me laugh but Mrs B hissed and forbade any pics.

For my sins, which are many and varied, I live in the depths of South Lincolnshire.
No, I do not have six toes, a hump, club foot or have had sex with my cousin, male or female.
Though one time with Gill..................oh never mind.

Anyhow. off for a stomp this morning on the marsh, reasonably popular on a Sunday morning with the dog walking (and after dark, dogging) crowd.
Normally 10 or so cars, today, 36.
I guess with no place to go this is the Sunday outing.
The fun bit was picking the locals out from the from the Easties and Portuguese.

Locals prepared, decent quality boots of expensive shooting wellies/boots, lots of wax cotton and goretex.
Spaniels and gun dogs various.

The other lot, fark me sideways, poncy trainers, flimsy jackets. Not to mention the hoop ear rings and troweled on Latvian Hooker style makeup.
Skirts, yoga pants, freezing tossers back in their cars sharpish along with their crap music.
Should there be a formation of a human canon battery and that nice wall rebuilt, sign me up.
I will cheerfully shoot the lot back whence they came.

 

[Nimbus]

Many lacking basic common sense let alone skills based on observations this morning.

Decided on big walk this morning so out at about 7.45. And soon the sun was shining bright. Bugger, says I.

Mrs B tells me not to be so miserable

"You'll see" I mutter

Part of route on way back involved passing through woodland and heathland which have car parks.

And sure enough by time we hot there at 09.45 area was crammed with families bimbing about because they have sod all else to do.

It has been a bit damp recently. In fact wet. Liquid mud aplenty

Many obvious skill gaps on display, and these are just the ones that Mrs B proceeded to get wound up about

1. Footwear selection (Expensive trainers. Won't wearing those again)

2. Choice of clothing (White jeans! Is she completely stupid?)

3. Use of baby buggies not equipped for, let alone with, balloon tyres or tracks ( What is wrong with these people?)

The baby buggy spectacle did make me laugh but Mrs B hissed and forbade any pics.

Ah... the old game of “how far up a hill will you find high heel prints?”...

however... carrying a section of mountain bike tyre and leaving tracks in improbable places is amusing...

 

[CivvyPete]

Back to the resilience skills bit, I'd say cooking, to the level of being able to start with a live animal/fish, and some veg pulled from the earth, and end with a hearty meal.

And social skills, being able to walk into a room of strangers, hold a conversation, and wind up knowing who to trust, who to watch, and if it all goes pear-shaped, who to kill first.

 

[AsterixTG]

...who to kill first.

Well, in my world, that would be taking out the biggest, heaviest motherfucker in the room before they can get a head of steam up.

Once Mother was dealt with, I'd be looking at my sister's South African husband, he's just a bit of a **** and it'd be fun.

After that Christmas should calm down a bit.

 

[Blogg]

if it all goes pear-shaped, who to kill first.

A key skill indeed, but when last with Mrs B's extended family in Wales for a funeral, decided that shooting one of the feral teenagers in the leg to buy some time whilst the others finished them off might be the better strategy

 

[RumRationReject]

The risk assessments you do at work are probably tick and flick forms you copy from the last time you did something similar, which is the worst way to manage safety but meets the requirements of the regulators!

An element of truth in that. But the tick-box forms satisfy the insurance and legal bods, not necessarily the HSE. Take, for example the issue of teachers not allowing kids to play conkers in the play ground.

One parent makes an issue over a trivial knock on the knuckles. Compensation culture requires playout. Insurers miffed, lawyers earning. Policies and premiums altered/increased. Other schools ban conkers. Everybody blames H&SE.

H&SE deny their involvement, In order to prove this H&SE now sponsor a schools conker competition. Why?
a) To show that "It wasn't us"
b) To develop of concept of risk management, as opposed to risk adversity.

Up thread there is mention of rolling risk assessment. This is related to the concept of Dynamic Risk Assessment. DRA asks the lead to ask themselves the question; Do the benefits outweigh the risks? Sadly form filled RA's do not allow for DRA to be applied. Fixed RA develops policy, rather than guidelines which, in turn, cements the behaviour FF describes.

This, in many ways is linked to the question of why the concept of risk management is not taught in schools (good idea by the way @Ravers ) How does a teacher write a RA that says Little Johnny can do this activity, until he hurts himself? Not possible. Especially when Wayne and Wanetta are call no win no fee lawyers before applying a sticking plaster. The school leave themselves open as soon as the activity shifts from that described in the RA. So no option for Little Johnny to learn resilience. Remember this is the insurance industry and their legal battalions, not the H&SE.

This could become a very long post. so I will hold back. In short kids need to be taught risk management, not risk adversity. Too much cotton wool has produced two decades of kids who simly have not been subject to that concept of thinking.

This is why DoE, cadets, school outdoor activities and so forth must be allowed to proper. Otherwise Private Frazer will have been correct,

 

[incendiarycutlery]

Since we’re on the subject of risk assessments, is there a consensus for how to convey the findings of a risk assessment?

 

[Mbongwe]

in old money,its called common sense.

I could only award you one "Excellent" for that, more's the pity. In an era in which thousands of hours of vital police resources are wasted (as detailed in Supermatelot's 999 thread) on Keli-Anne or Kymarli-Joe reporting that someone on Faceache "disrepec' me, ya get me", the chance of maintaining resilience (let alone building it) sadly seems slight...

 

[RumRationReject]

Since we’re on the subject of risk assessments, is there a consensus for how to convey the findings of a risk assessment?

In short, no.

The accepted steps are:
1. Identify the hazard
2. Identify who might be exposed to the hazard
3. Suggest how the hazard might be reduced
4. Identify remaining risk
5. Asses if risk level is acceptable; if not go round the buoy again.

The issue is how you identify #4. Some companies use a mathematical solution, some accept human assessment. It becomes an art at that point, rather than a science.

 

[762baynet]

History: Explain the worst behaviours of the worst totalitarians (Stalin, Mao, Hitler, Pol Pot) . Also about older historical figures like Genghis Khan, Alexander the Great, but emphasis on ACCURACY/TRUTH. How civilizations came to pass, why they fell. Nothing censored, just the teaching of history as it happened. Open discussion, not persuasion or manipulation based on personal or political bias.

Drifting off topic a bit, but Neil Oliver (porridge wog/long haired TV historian) said as much in the aftermath of the Edward Colston statue incident earlier in the year. Effectively- if you're interested in history, don't bother with a history degree, you will only learn a version of it that has been rinsed through a heavy left wing filter.

 

[putteesinmyhands]

Since we’re on the subject of risk assessments, is there a consensus for how to convey the findings of a risk assessment?

Clear
Loud
As an order
With Pauses.




Hang on.
No, the opposite.

 

[Dicky Ticker]

One of the things that the nuclear industry does very well is H&S.

Chernobyl was a massive wake up call that made everyone smarten up a bit.

A “questioning attitude” is one of the things that is instilled in everyone now.

Doesn’t matter if you work in the canteen or you’re the chief engineer. Everyone has the right to question things and say “is this safe?”

Sometimes it’s the most junior member of the team who spots a problem. Those of us who’ve watched Chernobyl will realise that had the people on the factory floor been empowered to question what was going on, the disaster probably wouldn’t have happened.

We’ve probably all heard that Qantas is the airline with the best safety record, this is largely down to Aussies having a questioning attitude from birth. It’s part of their culture. You can’t imagine an Aussie co-pilot biting his lip while the guy next to him makes a fatal mistake.

Conversely Japan used to have a very high rate of pilot error crashes for the opposite reason. Japanese culture is very hierarchical. You do what you’re told, obey the rules, never question your superiors or elders. There are various accounts of Japanese planes stoving in because the co-pilot dared not question the pilot.

Of course these attitudes aren’t just confined to the cockpit. We see it in the workshops and engineering facilities too. A maintenance error might be overlooked because a junior member was scared to show up the bloke who’d made the error.

How do we instil a questioning attitude in Britain? Can we teach it? It’s a fine line between creating a real benefit and creating a nation of self entitled gobby pricks.

It certainly doesn’t exist in the military. A private would never question an officer or NCO. There was the fairly recent case of the killick stoker on HMS Bulwark who climbed into a lift shaft while shitfaced and was killed while the junior lads around him just watched. All it would’ve taken is one of those lads to say “hold up shippers, this might not be such a great idea” and he’d probably be alive right now.

It’s also instilled in us not to listen to our subordinates. We know best and don’t want to be shown up by them. Again, in the nuclear world, it’s instilled in managers to look at information from every source and act on it.

Great, John, I told you! Geez! The difference between a duck and a co-pilot

This is apparently a classic but new to me: a training video recreating the issues in the cockpit from a runway overrun in 1976. The question was whether to land downwind on a foggy runway in icing…

fearoflanding.com

These are some of the reasons why we include young grads in our hazard identification sessions, they don't skip steps mentally because they "have been doing it for years".

The big car plants across the word used to have a lot of anger and resentent if the production line was stopped, but the Japanese instilled the culture that anyone along the line, regardless of their position in the company, has the right to stop the whole line if there is something wrong. safety culture took a big boost from that.

 

[Dicky Ticker]

Since we’re on the subject of risk assessments, is there a consensus for how to convey the findings of a risk assessment?

Use a risk matrix, there are thousands to choose from which are an issue in their own right because I've had manager try to frig the assessment to land in the "low risk, no action required" box.

Personally, go and google MIL-STD-882E, sit down and read through it and it will give you a much better structure for a safety program than any HSE/OHS/WHS legislation.

 

[incendiarycutlery]

Use a risk matrix, there are thousands to choose from which are an issue in their own right because I've had manager try to frig the assessment to land in the "low risk, no action required" box.

I was thinking more about You’ve done the risk assessment, how do you communicate a safe method of working?

Do you hand over the raw risk assessment or a summary?

 

[putteesinmyhands]

I was thinking more about You’ve done the risk assessment, how do you communicate a safe method of working?

Do you hand over the raw risk assessment or a summary?

The risk assessment is done by the organisation that will be doing the work. This organisation produces a safe system of work (aka method statement) and passes it to its workforce (and subcontractors). The risk assessment should be available for anyone to read, especially as it should be read in conjunction with the SSW.

The SSW tells people how to do the job while the RA gives the reasons why it's to be done that way.

The RA should be continuously updated to reflect changing conditions and the SSW adapted accordingly.

 

[Yokel]

Ignoring technical and managerial things like risk assessments, a Google search took me to Psychology Today:

The Eleven Skills and Attitudes that Can Increase Resilience

1. Being connected to others. Relationships that can provide support and caring are one of the primary factors in resilience. Having a number of these relationships, both within and outside of the family, that offer love, encouragement, and reassurance can build and support resilience, by developing new friendships, for instance.
2. Being flexible. By definition, it is a key component of resilience and one of the primary factors in emotional adjustment and maturity. This requires that an individual be flexible in his thinking and his actions, such as by trying something new.
3. Being able to make realistic plans and take action to carry them out. Being able to see what is, rather than what you would like is a part of this skill. Being proactive rather than reactive and assertive rather than aggressive or passive are components of this skill, for example taking a Red Cross course in CPR and First Aid.
4. Being able to communicate well with others and problem-solve both individually and with others. This includes basic communication, listening, and problem-solving skills, such as by working as a team member within your community.
5. Being able to manage strong feelings. This requires being able to take action without being impulsive and responding out of emotion. It also encompasses the ability to put emotions aside when clear thinking and action are required. Being able to use thinking as a way of managing one's emotions is a key component of this skill. For example, when you're angry or hurt, think before you act.
6. Being self-confident. Having a positive self-image is critical if a person is to be able to confront and manage fear and anxiety in his or her life, such as by helping someone else.
7. Being able to find purpose and meaning. Being able to make sense out of what is happening and to find meaning in it is critical if one is to be able to manage the feelings that are aroused in a crisis. Spiritual and religious practices are often a component of this factor, including acting on one's values.
8. Being able to see the big picture. This factor is often closely aligned with #7 and #5. Optimists in general are better able to see the bigger picture than pessimists. They are more likely to see good and bad events occurring in their life being temporary rather than permanent. This, too, will pass. They are also more likely to see events as having a specific impact on certain areas of their life rather than having a pervasive impact on their entire life or their future. Last of all, they are less likely to blame themselves or someone else for the hard times. Optimists avoid the blame game. They hold themselves and others accountable without the emotional dose of blame.
9. Being able to appreciate and use humor appropriately. Whether humor is "sick" or "dark" often depends on the setting. Laughter may have healing powers. For example, if you're not feeling well, watch a funny movie.
10. Being able to take care of yourself, e.g., diet, exercise, financial health, etc. First responders and health care professionals are often major offenders in this area. They often assume that the rules do not apply to them, but they do. Make a SMART Plan for exercise.
11. Being able to care for others physically and emotionally. Occupations and volunteer activities that involve caring for others can often build resilience, by volunteering in a shelter or a food bank, for instance.

 

[Fang_Farrier]

From a young age, folk should be taught that weather is no obstacle to going outdoors and exploring. It's about the correct clothing for the environment.

They should also know what "self rescue" means.