Experience in occupational safety: Case safety talks

The traditionally rationalistic domain of occupational safety is expanding from mistake prevention and fault-finding towards maximizing things that go well. The latter, known as Safety-II, calls for positive engagement by empowering workers to establish safety at work. This study takes a novel approach to Safety-II by focusing on the user experience to understand how it can help move towards Safety-II. This case study explores ‘safety talks’, a safety management method, and was conducted at two Australian mine sites. The study takes a qualitative approach with semi-structured interviews ( n = 25) of managers and employees. The data analysis followed inductive thematic analysis with a data-driven approach. The results show the significance of understanding the workers’ experience and needs to achieve desired outcomes with ‘safety talks’ and supporting them appropriately. They highlight the importance of improving safety, understanding the purpose, learning and caring. The results further identified conversation quality through inclusive engagement and relevance, and visibility of outcomes, as key elements for ‘safety talks’. To advance the Safety-II thinking, it is important to understand how workers can be motivated and empowered to work safely. Experience design is a promising yet underutilized approach to increase autonomous motivation to behave safely. This research provides the first step towards it. The Framework of Meaningful Safety Talks provides a grounding for future research on Safety-II management tools. There is a research gap in understanding the role of user experience of safety management tools. To our knowledge, this study is among the first to examine the emotional experiences of such tools. By using safety talks as an example, it contributes a Framework of Meaningful Safety Talks covering the user needs and requirements delivering them successfully.