power-plant
Regenerative Safety Culture: What Boards Can Do

By Nicole Barrett | Jun 3, 2021

“You cannot shift people’s behaviour by simply asking them to stop, start or do more. Changing behaviour necessitates changing the context and habits of thought that underpin the behaviour.”   First I need to clarify that, whilst widely...

role of the safety person
Transforming the Role of the Safety Person

By Nicole Barrett, Psychologist | May 15, 2017

Let's talk about the role of the safety person. I say 'person', because labels such as safety leader, safety manager, safety advisor and safety officer conjure up specific images and expectations about what these people do which may or may not be...

anxiety of safety
The Anxiety of Safety

By Nicole Barrett, Psychologist | Mar 6, 2017

For nearly 20 years I've been on projects designed to assess and improve culture and collated data from over 6000 surveys, 700 interviews and 100's of focus groups in the energy, construction, aviation and oil and gas industries as well as local and...

reporting culture
Creating a Reporting Culture Requires More Than 1 Plus 2

By Nicole Barrett, Psychologist | May 15, 2016

There are 2 conditions essential to the reporting of safety incidents which are very well supported by the literature. 1) It is easy to do; and 2) There is no blame. Makes perfect sense... All we need to do is have an efficient system or process...

risk taking
Risk Taking: short cuts and breaking rules is human nature... Right?

By Nicole Barrett, Psychologist | Mar 2, 2016

There is a commonly held belief that people will always take short cuts. For example, when asked about barriers to Health and Safety performance, leaders and managers often report "individual drivers" and that it's "human nature" to look for an easy...

safety culture
Speaking about Safety Culture with Todd Conklin

By Nicole Barrett, Psychologist | Feb 10, 2016

Very grateful for the opportunity of speaking with Todd about safety culture. I thoroughly enjoyed our conversation and hope that you do too. In reference to the purpose of our roles, this discussion sparked Todd to coin the phrase "to look for...

insanity of safety
The Insanity of Safety

By Nicole Barrett, Psychologist | Dec 10, 2015

Think about Albert Einstein's definition of insanity for a moment: "... doing something over and over and expecting different results." With the frontline workforce, complex systems and operating procedures lead to a tick and flick mentality...