The Lab Safety Gurus

Revolutionizing Safety Culture: The Intersection of Psychology and Laboratory Protocols

WITH DAN SCUNGIO & SEAN KAUFMAN Season 1 Episode 20

Unlock the secrets of aligning human psychology with laboratory safety protocols as Sean Kaufman and Dan Scungio unravel the intriguing parallels between Maslow's hierarchy of needs and the hierarchy of controls. Discover how addressing fundamental needs for air and water can be mirrored in engineering controls to create safer laboratory environments. As we journey through this discussion, we highlight the often overlooked connection between comfort, security, and adherence to safety measures, emphasizing the crucial role psychological safety plays in fostering an open culture of dialogue and innovation.

Prepare to have your perspective on safety culture transformed as we explore the symbolic power of two triangles—one upright, one inverted—and their combined potential to revolutionize organizational safety practices. This episode delves into how these geometric shapes can provide unexpected insights for strengthening safety measures. With gratitude to Dan Scungio for being a catalyst in this conversation, we reaffirm our dedication as lab safety gurus committed to empowering laboratories worldwide to cultivate robust and effective safety cultures. Join us in this compelling exploration and be part of the transformation in laboratory safety dynamics.

Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Lab Safety Gurus Podcast. I'm Dan Scungio.

Speaker 2:

And I'm Sean Kaufman, and together we're providing safety insights for those working in laboratory settings, doing safety together.

Speaker 1:

Alright, welcome everybody. Sean Kaufman, it is great to be sitting here talking with you again. How are you? I'm good, dan, I've missed you. How are you doing? I've been doing fantastic.

Speaker 1:

I've been keeping busy, but I've got a lot on my mind and I have some questions for you that I know that they're your area of expertise and I just you know I've always been seeking answers as a safety person about these things and you know I've recently been talking about like Maslow's hierarchy of needs, and I am no expert in that area at all. I didn't study it. I had to look up a lot about what it's about and I actually learned a lot about that from you. And why is that a concern to me as a lab safety professional? Because I also have to look at the upside-down triangle. Maslow's is sort of a regular triangle right, the upside-down triangle of the hierarchy of controls, which has been around since like the 1950s. It's not as old as Maslow by any stretch of the imagination, but it also dictates what we need to do for safety in a laboratory setting. Do these two triangles match up?

Speaker 1:

Can you have physiological needs, safety and security? You need love and belonging, self-esteem and, where I want everybody to be self-actualization? Can you do all that while working in your job, in the laboratory, having all of those needs met, and still be following things like engineering controls, work practice controls, using your PPE and all that? I don't see people doing that and I don't know why and I don't know how to make them. Is it because their needs aren't being met that people don't follow the rules? What do you think about all that?

Speaker 2:

That's a pretty big question. So, as you know, I'm you know again, I'm a behaviorist. So I, you know, I love Maslow's hierarchy of needs because, you know, it's not what people have learned traditionally. You know, people have learned that Maslow's hierarchy of needs is something we go through life and we achieve one after another. That's not what it was for. What Maslow was trying to understand and discover was he was trying to understand and discover why people behave and what were the drivers of the behavior, of the behavior.

Speaker 2:

And it's neat because the blending that you're talking about is something that we've considered, we thought about for a long time. Like, I'll give you an example. Let's just use one control, dan, as an example. Does this make sense? Yeah, if you look at the physiological needs, this is in Maslow's hierarchy of needs. It's air, food, water and shelter.

Speaker 2:

And you look at the engineering controls that would be, you know, self-closing doors, directional airflow, hands-free sinks, biosafety cabinets, autoclaves. Basically, what you're looking at is you're looking at the fundamental aspects of survival within Maslow's hierarchy of needs, but you're also looking at the it's not going to be survival, but what is absolutely critical to protect workers' health and safety and safety. If you look at, for example, how engineering controls do that they try to eliminate the hazards at the source and they try to create an environment that's extremely safe. And if you can't do that, then you can't do your work at all. And if you can't eat, you don't have access to air, food, water and shelter. Quite honestly, you're not surviving. So it's one of those things where, you know, I look at these controls and it's like a very important control that we have to do is create an environment in which the work we do is safe and secure, so we can go all the way down. But that's kind of just the start of how, in the past, I've paired these, or I've blended these, so to speak.

Speaker 1:

Okay, I mean, that makes sense to me a lot and I like how you use the original use of Maslow because I agree, I don't think that it's a climbing thing. I think there's something different in each of those levels of needs, but I don't like so. So when you were just talking a minute ago, I was thinking where does comfort fit in? Does comfort fit in under your physiological needs or it's not really safety and security?

Speaker 2:

No comfort actually is safety and security Comfort. That's exactly where that is, because if you don't feel safe, go ahead. Dan, I didn't mean to cut you off, go ahead.

Speaker 1:

So when I think of comfort and reason, you know people maybe they're not going to wear their lab coat because they're hot Okay, and I know that that's a management issue and you need to get your environment straight so that people aren't too hot or too cold in their environment and all that. But I hear that a lot. Right, people don't wear their lab coats because they're not comfortable. And actually, when you look at, when you delve into how PPE should be made and why it's made, there are ANSI standards and OSHA standards for lab coats and how they're constructed. For VSL2, at least labs you don't need to have a fluid impermeable lab coat. You need to have a fluid resistant lab coat because it's got to have some breathability Because if you wore something impermeable all day long you would melt underneath of it, underneath it. So comfort definitely is a piece of it and I was just yeah, I was like where does it fit?

Speaker 2:

in. You were right. I think physiological comfort would definitely fit into physiological needs, but I was. When you were saying comfort, I was thinking psychological safety, so to speak, the ability to not only communicate that I'm hot but also the ability to maybe work on alternatives for solving when you're hot. That's going to require psychological safety. The actual act of being hot, like where you're sweating and you're uncomfortable and that distracts you from being safe in your work. You're absolutely right, that would be a physiological need.

Speaker 1:

I really love diving a little bit deeper into this because I do not have a psychiatry background or a behavioral background human behavior but I obviously need to study and need to know human behavior in order to do my job, and so I think my favorite thing that you taught me in the past couple of years you know we've had lots of conversations about cell phone use, personal electronic devices, you know smartwatches, earbuds, whatever and there's a need for access to that technology, a need to satisfy an urge or to satisfy a craving, kind of like smoking. Right, you know you're addicted to nicotine, then you must have it. And I think you said that there's science out there that shows that addiction to these electronic devices or social media or whatever aspects of them, is as strong, if not stronger than, addiction to something like cigarettes.

Speaker 2:

Well, yeah, 100%. And this is why we go to that second realm, if's, if we talk about the second basic need, because keep in mind that cell phones they address, they, they, they really fulfill all basic needs. But but let's talk about that second need of safety and security. Because when we talk about safety and security, once we've established an environment where it's safe and secure to do the work, then we begin doing that work. That, that that's Maslow's area, right? So we've established an environment through engineering controls that provide safety and security.

Speaker 2:

But here's the deal this is where the hierarchy of controls for safety come in, or for containment, this is where administrative controls come in.

Speaker 2:

See, once you've established a safe environment to do your work, which is your work is behavior now you've got to actually have policies and procedures to do it safely, and that's where administrative controls come in. Your policies and procedures allow you to work safely and provide guidelines for safer behaviors, in that laboratory aspects and those safer behaviors is what gives you the need, or what gives you the stability in Maslow's hierarchy for the need to safety and security. Without those policies and procedures you don't have safety and security in the lab, and without safety and security in the lab, you're not going to have good behavior and not going to have good engagement laboratory staff. So, for example, like you said, no cell phones in the lab. Not only is the establishment of that policy and procedure important, but also compliance and accountability for when those policies aren't followed. That's absolutely important as well. Otherwise, you do not maintain a level of safety and security tied to MIASO's hierarchy of needs, but you also don't obtain the administrative controls you need to keep that environment safe.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, obtain the administrative controls you need to keep that environment safe. Yeah, you know, when you're going down the upside down triangle of the hierarchy of controls, administrative controls is where we start to lose control in safety and in leadership, because the human factor suddenly enters the fray. When you know if it's a properly set up engineering control, it's doing its job, with or without human interaction. Administrative controls is when people start. You know, if you're not overseeing the policies and procedures and the rules and regulations, people will start to do things outside of them. So you know, the thing that I now tell audiences when they ask the question about it is is what you suggested Give them. Give people an e-break, like we used to give people smoke breaks.

Speaker 1:

It was interesting yesterday, um, jason Nagy and I were presenting in Philadelphia and we asked the audience. We told them to look at the hierarchy of controls and talk about cell phones specifically. So if your procedure says you are not allowed to have a cell phone in your laboratory, is that elimination at the very top of the hierarchy of controls, or is that administrative controls? And Jason and I have sort of argued about this a little bit, but we took a poll of the audience. Most of them thought it was elimination. I still contend a procedure, a policy that says you can't have it really is an administrative control, because it doesn't always work. You can have a written policy saying no cell phones allowed, but people don't always follow it.

Speaker 2:

Well, I mean and Dan, in all fairness, like, let's talk about PPE. It applies to multiple areas. Like personal protective equipment can be a safety and security issue, it can be a self-esteem issue, it can be a belongingness issue. Let me tell you my perspective on it. I think that when workers are given equipment and they know that the organization cares about their safety and sometimes that can be demonstrated through personal protective equipment I think it's directly tied to Maslow's hierarchy of safety or Maslow's hierarchy of needs, specifically love and belongings.

Speaker 2:

Now there's importance to developing culture, there's importance to developing team camaraderie. There's a lot of importance there. But personal protective equipment also reflects a very social aspect of safety because it's observable and when workers feel like they're being cared for through proper safety measures and proper safety equipment, it can foster a sense of belongingness to a community within the workplace, meaning it shows that the organization values their staff and their employees. Certainly, again, if we look at all of the controls that are in place to protect, you know, the safety and security of staff and what's being done in those labs, yeah, 100%.

Speaker 1:

And I also look at the hierarchy of needs. Like we get to the point of self-esteem or love and belonging. You know, sense of connection. So if everybody's doing it, if everybody's using their PPE, you're going to do it too. It's betterment for safety, but also it's a good culture to be in. If your laboratory is like that, I wish more labs were like that, so that you know, I always look at the top of Maslow's hierarchy and go oh, self-actualization. I'm unique, I'm important and I need to protect myself.

Speaker 2:

That is. You know. It's funny that we say that, because our self-esteem in Maslow's hierarchy of needs can be paired with culture in a way that does your organization ask for the workers' opinions? Do they recognize good behaviors and safer behaviors? Do they involve employees in decision making and do they provide opportunities for employees to grow professionally? Does the organization respect them and give them a sense of accomplishment? And if that's something the organization does which, by the way, is safety culture then what you're doing is you're meeting the esteem needs of your laboratory staff.

Speaker 2:

Now I know our time is running out. I got one more thing to say about self-actualization. This is the biggest one, this is the really cool part. Self-actualization is not a final destination, it's a process, and we are always talking about continuous improvement. And when we talk about self-actualization, we're actually talking about continuous improvement in the control aspects, meaning when we talk about the highest levels of both hierarchies. It's important for us to understand that the person is always developing, but so is the organization. Meaning we haven't learned, we're learning. We haven't trained, we're training. And we haven't, you know, behaved, we're behaving. And so what we always must recognize is that not only is an organization continuously improving, but so are the people working in the lab as well.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and if you're in lab safety, you're working always to improve the safety culture too. Yeah, so I do. I love that. I think that's part of our journey that we need to be taking, and I think that the two triangles, one right side up and the other one upside down, fit pretty well together. They don't all mean the same thing, but I think that the two triangles, one right side up and the other one upside down, fit pretty well together. They don't all mean the same thing, but I think they can all be used together to help us figure out what we need to do to keep our safety cultures growing and getting stronger.

Speaker 2:

Very, very good. Well, Dan, thank you for facilitating this session. I missed you, man. I look forward to talking to you next month.

Speaker 1:

Yep, we will do it soon.

Speaker 2:

Take care everybody. All right, take care, dan. We are the lab safety gurus, dan Scungio and Sean Kaufman.

Speaker 1:

Thank you for letting us do lab safety together.