Facilitator’s Guide for Generating Discussion

Behavioural Safety DVD I: Building hyper-awareness – seeing potential accidents before they happen

Basic Facts

Slips trips and falls still cause most of our accidents. Some people don’t even get hurt at the worksite – they get hurt going to the job or after the job is completed. When we have done something 100 times or been working in a place for many months or years, it’s just human to become over familiar and complacent.

Eventually, someone will do something silly or not think and leave things in an unsafe condition. If you don’t SEE the unsafe condition there is nothing you can do about it and it WILL probably hurt you. Building hyper-awareness is a brilliant way to stop 3 out of 10 accidents.

Questions to ask participants.

REMEMBER, you don’t have to ask all of these questions. Once you ask one or two, other people will contribute. Feel free to make up you own questions. Relax. Your job is not to convince people or lecture them or “put them right”. The facilitator’s job is to get people to think and question. If you allow people the time and space to think they will eventually come up with the best answers. Enjoy coaching others to work even more safely! Instead of the phrase “risk assessment”, some people use the terms “safe job analysis” or ”job safe analysis”.

1.What did you think of the hyper-awareness message in the DVD? Did it make sense?

2.Can anyone give us an example of an incident that happened recently, at work or at home where lack of awareness contributed?

3.Do we do our risk assessments well enough? (Remember, everyone on a job should be involved in the risk assessment and they should contribute. We should visit the worksite before or during the risk assessment).

4.If not why not – what could we do better?

5.Is Dr Bill right when he talks about the dangers of generic risk assessments?

6.How often do we use them and are we taking enough precautions?

7.How do you think our last-minute (worksite) mini-risk assessments work? What do you think, – a re they helping us? (Ask this question especially of new guys or visitors).

8.How much time do these mini-risk assessments take?

9.What do you think about Dr Bill’s idea of using safety alerts more? (In the DVD the recommendation is that we use them as an exercise – not just to be read out).

10.Does anyone want to take a safety alert and turn it into a 5-minute exercise for the next meeting?

11.Do you think Dr Bill is a bit of “nutter” when he talks about being paranoid for safety?

12.Do any of you think you are hyper-aware already? Can you give us an example?