Browsing by Author "Karanikas, Nektarios"
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Item Open Access Designing safety interventions for specific contexts(Lloyd’s Register Foundation, 2022-04-30) Pilbeam, Colin; Karanikas, Nektarios; Steinmann, Fabian; Baker, Philip; Khan, ShanchitaExecutive Summary Workplace health and safety (H&S) is a significant global issue; around 500 million people are adversely affected by work-related injuries and illnesses each year, while the number of daily workplace fatalities runs into the thousands. One explanation for these alarming statistics may lie in the way safety interventions are introduced and implemented in different contexts. A ‘safety intervention’ could be any physical artefact, process, procedure, skills, or specialist knowledge that restores, maintains, or strengthens safety (i.e., prevents or mitigates safety risks; influences culture and behaviours; improves health and wellbeing; ensures compliance with legal requirements). Misalignment between interventions and context increases the possibility of failure with adverse consequences. Where interventions ‘fit’ the context safety performance is high. There is a clear requirement to minimise harm and maximise worker well-being in the workplace, a change that can be driven by the implementation of context-appropriate safety interventions. However, the degree to which organisations and occupational H&S researchers, and trainers contemplate contextualisation processes, and the variables that influence these processes, when sourcing, designing and implementing safety interventions is unclear and may account for the lack of success observed for some interventions. In this report we attempt to address this knowledge gap and present the findings of our investigation into whether and how researchers, trainers, and organisations consider contextual factors in safety interventions. The study comprised of three broad strands. Firstly, a comprehensive Rapid Evidence Assessment (REA) reviewed scholarly work published in peer-reviewed journals between 2011 and 2021; from an initial sample of 3,450 studies, 73 studies were included in the final review. Secondly, a screen of nationally and internationally recognised training materials, coupled with 12 semi-structured interviews with experienced trainers, was performed to determine how frequently safety courses considered context. Finally, further interviews with industry stakeholders were performed to identify both successful and unsuccessful interventions and to ascertain if context was a factor in outcomes. We identified that training and education was the most frequently applied intervention, and training providers confirm that they believe appropriate consideration of context would increase the effectiveness of interventions. However, it was also clear that few courses consider the influence of context on the interventions or describe a framework whereby such contextualisation could occur. For example, interventions are often ‘borrowed’ from other organisations and are not adjusted to meet the specific needs of the new environment. This, coupled with the observation of a widespread failure of organisations to review the impact of their safety training in a continuous fashion and update and improve its implementation, suggests that there is a need for organisational level adjustments. We, therefore, suggest that the following five recommendations are developed to improve the training of workplace H&S, and thus its implementation: 1. Organisations should begin considering the context of interventions as much as the intervention itself during implementation. This process can be assisted via the development of the processes detailed below. 2. Organisations, occupational safety and health (OSH) training providers, OSH institutions and agencies, and academia should develop guidelines that indicate key success factors (KSFs) for safety training effectiveness within the organisational context, and how these 3 KSFs can be achieved. These would consider organisational characteristics, trainee demographics and features of the intervention. 3. Organisations, OSH training providers, OSH institutions and agencies, and academia should develop guidelines for designing online safety training materials that consider context. This should consider aesthetics, usability and usefulness drawing on existing knowledge of technology acceptance. 4. Organisations, OSH training providers, OSH institutions and agencies, and academia should develop guidelines to produce immersive, interactive, digital content for contextually relevant safety training materials to meet growing demand. 5. OSH training providers, OSH institutions and agencies and OSH regulators should promote the need to review the benefits of safety training after the event and to review current understanding before re-training. In addition, the field would benefit from further research to better describe methodologies and frameworks that will allow for efficient contextualisation of H&S interventions across a wide range of industries. These have been specified in a further set of 11 recommendations.Item Open Access Designing safety interventions for specific contexts: results from a literature review(Elsevier, 2022-08-24) Karanikas, Nektarios; Khan, Shanchita R.; Baker, Philip R. A.; Pilbeam, ColinA misalignment between safety interventions and the workplace context of their application could lead to diminished effectiveness or failure. This paper is the first of three of an umbrella study that aimed to understand whether and how researchers and organisations consider contextual factors in safety interventions. Through Rapid Evidence Assessment (REA) process, we searched and selected scholarly work indexed in the bibliographic databases Medline, APA PsycArticles, Web of Science and Scopus between January 2011 and June 2021. The studies were analysed using a framework developed according to translation theory about (de)contextualisation of knowledge. The framework was enriched to consider psychosocial factors at the organisational level and physical, cognitive and emotional factors of the interventions’ recipients. We identified 73 eligible studies, of which 47 described safety interventions that had not been deployed in workplaces (e.g., pilot studies and concepts) and 26 studies referred to those deployed. No study considered all factors of the framework. Communication and support from management and colleagues were the most considered psychosocial factors, whereas conflicting demands and job security were the least considered. Moreover, cognitive factors of workers were mentioned in 77% of the sample, with only one study considering inclusively cognitive, emotional and physical factors of recipients. About 62% of the implemented interventions were functional (e.g., training, education and communication-related interventions), with only four studies reporting physical interventions. Also, most of the interventions were sourced from the literature and introduced as ‘new practice’ at the targeted workplaces, with only one article reporting a failed intervention. Overall, the findings of this research indicated that intervention studies did not visibly follow a translation-transformation path between sources and recipients, did not systematically consider contextual factors at the workplaces targeted, and all interventions represented administrative controls, contrary to the widely accepted principle of the hierarchy of controls.Item Open Access Effective transfer of safety interventions within and between organizations: Leveraging translation theory to achieve improved outcomes(Elsevier, 2023-09-21) Pilbeam, Colin; Karanikas, NektariosSafety interventions are often ‘borrowed’ from one organizational setting, where they have worked successfully, to another organizational setting but not necessarily with the same positive outcomes. Translation theory could offer potential insights into the processes through which managers translate safety practices either from one organization to another or from one part to another part of the same organization. To examine this possibility, this study used the framework method of analysis, underpinned by a conceptual framework developed from translation theory, to analyse qualitative data from interviews with experienced managers having responsibility for safety in their organization who shared narratives of eight different safety interventions deployed in a variety of industry sectors ranging from oil and gas to retail from around the world. By inference from the data, analysis shows that interventions of low complexity, low embeddedness and high explicitness which theory characterises as more translatable, were also in practice more successfully translated. Furthermore, interventions with senior management support had higher levels of interpretive viability, thus making them more transformable and ensuring translation success. Also, translations were more successful when the safety interventions received adequate resourcing, were targeted at a narrow rather than a broad organizational scope and where they were integrated into existing work practices. The conceptual elements of the framework adopted in this study have the potential to support the development of translation competence among safety professionals, thus permitting the future deployment of more effective safety interventions in the workplace to reduce accidents and injuries.Item Open Access Safety training in context: technical, cultural and political factors affecting its design, delivery and transfer(Elsevier, 2023-06-16) Pilbeam, Colin; Karanikas, NektariosIntroduction: Safety training is integral to modern safety management systems. However, what is trained in the classroom is not always adopted and applied in the workplace, creating the training transfer problem. Taking an alternative ontological stance, the aims of this study were to conceptualize this problem as one of ‘fit’ between what is trained and the contextual factors in the work environment of the adopting organization. Method: Twelve semi-structured interviews were conducted with experienced health and safety trainers having diverse backgrounds and experience. Data were thematically coded ‘bottom-up’ to capture reasons for safety training and where consideration of context occurs in the design and delivery of training. Then, the codes were thematically grouped against a pre-existing framework to categorize contextual factors that affect ‘fit’ into technical, cultural, and political factors each operating at different levels of analysis. Results: Safety training occurs to satisfy external stakeholder expectations and meet internal perceptions of need. Consideration of contextual factors can occur both in the design and delivery of training. A range of technical, cultural, and political factors were identified, which can operate at individual, organizational, or supra-organizational levels to influence safety training transfer. Conclusions: The study draws particular attention to the influence of political factors and the impact of supra-organizational factors on the successful transfer of training, areas not consistently considered in safety training design and delivery. Practical Application: The application of the framework adopted in this study provides a useful tool for discriminating between different contextual factors and the level at which they operate. This could enable more effective management of these factors to improve the potential for transfer of safety training from the classroom to the workplace.