Departing from the Zero Harm delusion

In a chance encounter, our columnist engages in a thought-provoking discussion about the myths and challenges surrounding the “Zero Harm” mantra in the risk and safety industry.

Early in September, I was standing on a bus waiting to travel from the Venice Airport terminal to my flight back home to Vienna, after spending a couple of days working at one of our paper mills. I was in my own world, reflecting on the trip and the meetings held, as well as site visits and discussions, when I heard a voice say: “Hi Brian.” As I turned, I noticed an acquaintance (for the article I will refer to him as Bob), the owner of a risk and safety consultancy company, with whom I had worked around 13 years ago.

I was obviously surprised to see Bob, but we exchanged greetings and handshakes, engaging in some general small talk. On the plane, we were coincidentally seated next to each other, so we were able to continue our discussion. It was not long, however, before he started criticising the way I had, over the years, written about the shortcomings of traditional safety, including the much-needed change to a more balanced approach. Psychological and cultural elements should be included, not just physical controls. 

As I appreciate people challenging my beliefs and writings on this subject, I asked him to explain why he disagreed. The first things that he mentioned were the infamous mantras of “Zero Harm” and “all incidents and injuries are preventable”. He then challenged me again, by saying: “As someone in the safety and health field, how could you ever believe that all injuries cannot be prevented, and that Zero Harm is not achievable?” To be honest, I was not surprised or taken aback by his comments; in my view, sadly, far too many people employed in the risk and safety industry, as well as leaders in general, think exactly like Bob and believe in these unachievable mantras. 

Our discussions continued for most of the flight. After Bob had finished bashing my approach – at times, becoming almost irritated with my responses and comments – I was eventually given the opportunity to explain my stance against the Zero Harm mantra, and why I strongly believe that not all injuries are preventable. 

I put forward many of my reasons, giving examples, and explained that if one believes that Zero Harm is achievable, then one believes that all people are beings of perfection. This denies fallibility. I could see by his body language and gestures that my explanations and various examples were making sense; however, he tried his best to think of counterarguments to support his approach and belief in Zero Harm. On reflection, I understood why he was opposing my approach: he is a consultant selling the idea of Zero Harm to companies around Europe, and therefore reluctant to take the blinkers off and look wider than Zero Harm. 

Zero Harm with caps

As you probably noticed in the previous paragraphs, I capitalised the words “Zero Harm”, the reason being that the word Harm has a much wider meaning than simply having physical injuries, and Zero Harm has a much wider meaning than having no lost time injuries. The mantra Zero Harm is most definitely not related only to injuries; Harm includes anything detrimental to others, so surely Harm extends to things like bullying, discrimination, unfairness, poor working conditions, long working hours, work-related burn-out, first aid cases, and much more?

Discourse in the Language of Zero Harm

When writing a chapter of my book Humanising Leadership in Risk, I decided to do some benchmarking with others. I had some discussions with leaders, as well as others in safety and health from various companies that strive for the target of Zero Harm. The definitions that came up were extremely varied. Some companies only measured lost time injuries, so if they had no lost time injuries, they believed their target of Zero Harm had been achieved. It makes one think … so, if a person experiences an injury requiring medical treatment only, or is placed on restricted work, these injuries are not regarded as Harm, and are therefore not included in the company’s statistics or reports, or even annual public reports. 

Some of the companies did not include injuries to contractors in their performance. Sadly, one person that I spoke to mentioned that he was aware of a company that despite experiencing several contractor fatalities, still did not include contractor injuries in their performance. So, not including these fatalities in their reports, I wonder if they truly believe that they achieved Zero Harm. This language discourse only develops mistrust amongst employees as well as contractors.

A couple of the people with whom I spoke made comments such as, “even if the goal is unachievable, it should remain the ultimate objective”, and “we should aspire to achieving Zero Harm, no matter what”. How absurd that people set an unachievable objective.

Recently, I was given a newspaper article to read in which a certain industry’s safety body mentioned that safety targets can be reached, but Zero Harm will remain elusive (meaning difficult to achieve). In the same article, they then mention that the ultimate goal of Zero Harm can be reached. If not totally contradictory, these two statements are certainly at odds. A couple of lines further down, they say that Zero Harm is only possible if all jobs are done by robots, rather than people … I wonder if they considered that even in this scenario, someone will have to maintain and repair those robots! 

Spin-off

Zero Harm is nothing but a myth – something that cannot be achieved and, therefore, makes no sense to strive for. It only creates distrust amongst employees and often, when someone gets injured, they are bullied for breaking the Zero Harm record.

If you have not watched the movie Dark Waters, I encourage you to do so, to see how a large organisation – known for their good safety performance and culture – placed profits above people. Even though their “Bradley Curve Model” reflects the various steps to achieve Zero Harm, they caused Harm to around 70,000 people living in the community close to one of their large production facilities. Obviously, my observations are based on the movie, however, as the old mantra goes: “Where there is smoke, there is fire.” This caused a lot of distrust of the company in the surrounding community. 

The company produced frying pans, paints, and other products containing carcinogens. They were dumping thousands of tonnes of chemical waste into the ground and emissions into the air, resulting in water contamination and causing Harm to people, resulting in life threatening conditions, farm animal deaths, and environmental damage. It affected pregnant mothers (some of them working for the company) and even resulted in babies being born with facial deformities.

The evidence provided showed that, over the years, the company had known their chemicals and processes were harming their own employees operating the production lines, the neighbouring community, and the consumers who were buying and using their products on a daily basis. Despite knowing the risks, the company’s management covered it all up, a total contradiction to their approach of Zero Harm … so much “double speak”.

Summary

Using the mantra of Zero Harm and saying “all injuries are preventable” is absolutely absurd, because it ignores human fallibility and supposes that people are beings of perfection, which we all know is not the reality of life. 

Some years ago, as a speaker at a conference in Amsterdam, I recall sitting with three people during the lunch break. One of them, a consultant, posed a similar question to one posed to me previously by my good friend and mentor, Rob Long: “So, if you are opposed to Zero Harm, how many injuries are you prepared to have?” 

At first, I wanted to respond by saying, “What a silly question,” but I refrained from doing so. Instead, I said that opposing Zero Harm, or disagreeing with the mantra “all injuries are preventable”, does not mean I would like to accept having injuries at the workplace. I went on to explain that while I do not want people to get injured, I do understand that people are fallible and will be injured at some point.

He still did not fully agree with my comment, so I took a business card out of my wallet and gave it to him. As he took hold of it, I pulled it back and said, “Imagine you got a paper cut from my business card. How would you prevent that injury?” He answered that it couldn’t be prevented. I then pointed out that a paper cut could also be experienced at the copier machine in an office; once again, I challenged him on whether that could be prevented, to which he again responded that no, it could not be prevented. By the look on his face and his sheepish glances at the two others seated at our table, I think he got my message. Nevertheless, I was sure that he would continue selling Zero Harm to his clients. 

We can only hope that, in time, the safety and health industry will fully understand that “Zero Harm” – in the full meaning of the phrase – is an impossible goal, and consequently remove this mantra from their language and move on. By doing so we will start to change the industry and, in turn, create more trust, allow people to feel safe to speak up, and contribute to the development of the desired culture.