The current state of organizational safety requires an approach that considers the cognitive, behavioral and affective elements of risk-related decision making. Without consideration of the affective domain, the emotional drivers for subconscious decision making cannot be acknowledged and addressed.
Organizations frequently attempt to identify effective interventions to improve safety performance (including tools, processes and messages to employees); however, gaps and residual injuries often still remain after such solutions are put in place. The team at DuPont Sustainable Solutions believes behavior-based safety should be the foundation for safety management systems, but to improve safety performance, organizations must understand how employees make decisions and teach them how to make better decisions to lower their risk.
Recent advancements in understanding the affective domain have created new avenues of research and application for moving organizations beyond their safety performance plateaus and toward truly independent and interdependent cultures.
Why is there new interest in the affective domain? It is estimated people make tens of thousands of decisions daily, many of which are subconscious (Daum, 2012). We need to consider whether decisions are followed by actions with consequences, and whether they are made consciously or subconsciously.
In response to new research findings in the growing field of neuroscience, DuPont Sustainable Solutions has invested in the creation of a new intervention called The Risk Factor, which includes the affective element of risk-related decision making. This new offering tasks participants with examining the drivers for their personal risk-related decisions.
Visit www.Training.DuPont.com/The-Risk-Factor to download the full white paper, "The Impact of the Subconscious on Risk-Based Decision Making," and get more information on The Risk Factor.
