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evangelism
Safety is now an industry, is now a religion
This post is an extension of the thinking in yesterday's post on the evangelism of mine safety (read it here).
It strikes me that, in South Africa especially, we have managed to externalise the role of safety. If we had to deconstruct what quality work, or mining, is we would find that operating safely is a core component of that work. In recognizing this, and the critical nature of safety, we have successfully extracted safety from quality work, and put it on a pedestal of its own. In doing so, an industry has been borne - and this is how most industries come to be.
But then I'm also aware of how, in South Africa especially, anyone who has anything to do with safety has their own perspective on the problem of safety. Share a cup of coffee with them on a break at a safety conference and you'll find they know what "the biggest problem" is in safety, and they'll eat up the rest of your break with their monologue on how the government doesn't do enough of this, how leaders should be doing that, and it goes on.
Now, if the emergence of a religious metaphor in the industry is valid, then I wonder if we can draw parallels between how an established religion works and the dynamics of the safety industry ...
The religious evangelism of mine safety - a new metaphor
In our recent research collaboration with Deloitte into the state of mine safety (available here) we exposed a metaphor that was prevalent in the industry: that of policing. That is, almost the entire industry is being governed by the dynamics associated with policing behaviour, risk, attitudes and impact.
While attending a seminar today, where we presented the results of our recent study, Sonja and I uncovered another prevalent metaphor: that of religious evangelism. We noticed how almost every presentation or comment was saturated with evangelical religious undertones and metaphors, of which the speakers were largely unaware. They would say things like:
- "we need to believe in Safety"
- "we need to have faith in our people and systems"
- "we need to convert the unconverted ... the infidels"
- "the fact that industry, government & unions are working together is a miracle"
- "we must move from being firemen & policemen to being missionaries"
- "today we are preaching to the converted"
Now, it is a natural human tendency to use metaphors when explaining concepts, but it is another thing using a metaphor because it emerges as a representation of values and drivers behind a pattern of behaving and acting in relation to a problem.
