Elsevier

Applied Ergonomics

Volume 46, Part A, January 2015, Pages 107-114
Applied Ergonomics

Work debate spaces: A tool for developing a participatory safety management

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apergo.2014.07.012Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Studies emphasize the importance of initiating a discussion about actual work in organizations.

  • There are few studies that demonstrate the practical effects of this discussion.

  • We demonstrate how a structured debate can contribute to the persons and organization.

  • We noted improvements not only on the safety but also the health and competences of the agents.

Abstract

In recent years, various studies have shown the importance of instituting work debate space within companies in order to address constraints within the organization. However, few of these studies demonstrate the implementation methods of discussion spaces and their contributions. Based on the action research developed in an electric company, this article demonstrates how work debate space (WDS) contribute to the development of an integrated safety culture. After describing the establishment methods and function of WDS within a technical group, we will present the main benefits of these spaces for the organization and its employees, and then discuss the minimal conditions for their implementation.

Introduction

The evolution of sociotechnical systems in the world of work is accompanied by the creation of new rules and new technology with the goal of improving safety methods (Rasmussen, 1997). Consequently, employees see different types of changes in their work. On the one hand, local managers find themselves under an obligation of managerial performance, thus distancing them from the technical work site (Journé, 2005). On the other hand, safety procedures are multiplied in order to compensate for the absence of management and to limit the reporting of field information. This can lead to situations where compliance to the rules is difficult or impossible to achieve in the case of an unexpected event (Dekker, 2003, Amalberti et al., 2004). One of the possible effects of such situations is that operators do not want to talk about everyday problems of safety, and managers do not want to hear about them (Rocha et al., 2013).

To remedy this break of interactions within the collectives, various studies emphasize the importance of reestablishing the work group through the participation of workers (Lewin, 1951, Liker et al., 1989), by engaging reflective practices among them (Schön, 1983, Mollo and Falzon, 2004) and initiating discussions about actual work and micro-activities within organizations (Hendry and Seidl, 2003, Detchessahar and Journé, 2011).

The challenge is thus to develop spaces in which employees and managers can participate in arbitrations related to safety, in order to transform the organization (Daniellou et al., 2011). The objective of this debate is that the contradictions raised by the employees, particularly the operators which are at the crossroads of different procedures and instructions produced by the organization, be expressed, discussed and resolved (Detchessahar, 2001).

The research presented here aimed at developing a safety management based on Human and Organizational Factors. It was conducted in an electric company, and implemented work debate space (WDS) within this organization. This paper describes the real-life contributions gained from discussions about work on both the individual and organizational levels, and considers some conditions for discussion implementation.

Section snippets

Developing participatory approaches to create a culture of safety

In daily work, “there will always be situations that are either not covered by the rules or in which the rules are locally inapplicable” (Reason et al., 1998, p.297). Safety relies on the ability of workers to assess the applicability of procedures and adaptations to carry them out (Dekker, 2003). In order to progress in this field, it is necessary to consider the safety approach as adaptive, dynamic, and developmental (Nascimento et al., 2013).

Dekker (2003) distinguishes between two models of

Context and objectives

The present study is a part of a 3-year research project conducted in an electric company that wished to implement a new approach of safety management aimed at better articulating regulated and managed safety, at all levels of the company.

The project consisted at working with managers and operators to co-construct a system capable of anticipating risky conditions from the sharing of experiences and the collective discussion of daily situations. The objectives were twofold. From a theoretical

Results

The results of this study are presented in two parts. In the first section we describe the local method of debate co-constructed with the agents during the experimentation phase. Then, we present the contributions brought on by this method, which is the central theme of this article.

Conclusion: WDS as tools for safety development

The results presented highlighted that the contributions of the WDS concern both the individuals and the organization. The WDS allows operators to develop their competences and construct a collective experience. In doing so, it develops their capacity to come up with pertinent answers in real time, and allows them to increase the reporting of and treatment of risky situations. The results equally show that progressively, agents move from the analysis to the treatment situations, then continue

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    • Bridging the gap between culture and safety in a critical care context: The role of work debate spaces

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      Bechky and Okhuysen (2011) confirm the idea that long-term processes such as the development of culture cannot be ignored in the study of situations to understand how reliability and safety are ensured. In this view, the concept of WDS (Detchessahar, 2013; Detchessahar and Journé, 2018; Rocha et al., 2015, 2019) can enable a better understanding of the relationship between situations encountered and long-term aspects. Recent studies on WDS in both the resilience (Detchessahar et al., 2017) and safety (Rocha et al., 2019) literature consider WDS as a way to connect the formal organization with the living organization “to make the daily experiences visible, so that local arbitrations are the starting point of organizational changes” (Rocha et al., 2015, p. 108).

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