Understanding Safety Clutter and How to Address It
Safety clutter is a growing concern in modern organisations, often resulting from well-meaning safety initiatives that unintentionally create layers of red tape and paperwork. Safety clutter refers to the accumulation and persistence of safety-related tasks, procedures, or paperwork that, despite being labeled as “safety work,” does not actually contribute to improving operational safety. Instead, these activities can overwhelm workers and management, creating a false sense of security while potentially diverting attention from inherent hazards and uncontrolled risks.
A recent journal article titled Safety Clutter: The Accumulation and Persistence of ‘Safety’ Work that Does Not Contribute to Operational Safety explores this issue in depth. It highlights that while safety regulations and processes are designed to protect employees, over time, organisations often add more layers of safety protocols without critically assessing their effectiveness. This results in a system bloated with redundant procedures, excessive reporting requirements, and unnecessary checks that do little to enhance actual safety outcomes.
The study identifies three core forms of safety clutter:
- Compliance Clutter: Redundant documentation or auditing requirements aimed at meeting regulatory demands but offering no real improvement in safety.
- Procedural Clutter: Unnecessary or overly complex procedures that employees must follow, often without clear links to the risks they are meant to mitigate.
- Administrative Clutter: Tasks related to maintaining safety records or meetings that take up significant time and effort but fail to drive meaningful safety improvements.
Safety clutter persists because organisations tend to add new safety measures in response to incidents without removing outdated or ineffective ones. Furthermore, safety work that doesn’t add value is often difficult to identify because it is embedded within a broader compliance framework. While these tasks may seem like they are contributing to safety, they often cause frustration, slow down work processes, and distract from more critical safety interventions. By eliminating safety clutter, businesses not only foster a safer work environment but also increase operational efficiency, reducing unnecessary time spent on redundant tasks.
We couldn’t write an article without a little business psychology…below is another perspective you may wish to consider if you are contemplating tackling your clutter.
Understanding the Impact of Procedure Management on Compliance Behaviour
The journal article Are You Sure You Want Me to Follow This? A Study of Procedure Management, User Perceptions, and Compliance Behaviour sheds light on the significant role that user perceptions play in the effectiveness of safety procedures. The study explores how employees’ attitudes towards safety procedures directly influence their compliance behavior. When safety processes are perceived as overly complex, irrelevant, or burdensome, workers are more likely to either ignore or bypass them, leading to non-compliance and potential safety risks. e.g. many ICAM investigations focus on what is the current procedure and what actually was conducted in the field at the time of incident, highlighting the deviation from the procedure.
A key finding of the study is that employees are more likely to follow procedures when they view them as clear, practical, and closely aligned with actual work conditions. However, if procedures are seen as irrelevant to the real risks faced in their day-to-day tasks, compliance can decrease significantly. The research emphasises the importance of involving frontline workers in the design and management of procedures to ensure that safety protocols are both practical and applicable. By streamlining safety procedures and ensuring that they are easy to understand and directly tied to operational safety, organisations can improve adherence and reduce the likelihood of safety incidents.
At Spring Safety Consultants, our team works with organisations of all sizes, from startups with no existing systems to large, established companies, to streamline and declutter their safety processes. Our approach involves collaboration with the workforce to refine safety protocols, making them practical, effective, and aligned with the real-world risks workers face. This ultimately enhances compliance behaviour and boosts safety outcomes. We ensure that every procedure, policy, and report is purposeful and directly enhances operational safety, helping businesses build efficient and effective safety management systems. We specialise in identifying redundant or non-contributing safety activities and help businesses focus on the most impactful safety measures. By simplifying and optimising safety management systems, we enable organisations to maintain compliance, improve worker engagement, and ensure that safety efforts truly make a difference in protecting employees and reducing risks.
References
Kanse, L., Parkes, K., Hodkiewicz, M., Hu, X., & Griffin, M. (2018). Are you sure you want me to follow this? A study of procedure management, user perceptions and compliance behaviour. Safety Science, 101, 19–32.
Rae, A. J., Provan, D. J., Weber, D. E., & Dekker, S. W. A. (2018). Safety clutter: The accumulation and persistence of ‘safety’ work that does not contribute to operational safety. Policy and Practice in Health and Safety, 16(2), 194–211
