Labs nearly always have some hazards that can produce some level of risk to staff. Lab leaders responsible for the safety program need to develop a variety of communication skills to ensure that risks are understood and communicated effectively to teammates and neighbors. People’s ability to mitigate risks requires us to effectively communicate the hazards and risks. This can be challenging because of the different ways that people perceive and understand risk around the lab. Here are five tips to help you communicate about risk more effectively with people in your lab.
Collaborative risk assessment
Spend time with scientists in the lab discussing their experiments, workflows, and equipment. Engage in collaborative approaches to understand hazards and risks. Learn from them how they perceive risks and how they currently mitigate them to ensure everyone’s safety. Share your expertise to help them broaden their appreciation of potential issues and how to use the hierarchy of controls to eliminate or reduce the risks.
Explore risk perceptions
Different people can perceive risks in very different ways based on their experience, habits, training, and knowledge. What seems risky and dangerous to one scientist may seem like normal, everyday work to another. Sharing perceptions of risk is critical in creating a baseline of acceptable risk. As Jonathan Klane, an expert in lab safety, says, “Let’s communicate about our varying risk perceptions and then make judgments under uncertainty.”
Use the 7Cs of effective communication
Traditional best practices in communication emphasize the seven Cs: clear, concise, concrete, correct, considerate, complete, and courteous. Integrating these concepts throughout your communication will improve outcomes, especially when communicating about lab safety. When discussing risk, it can also be beneficial to add an eighth context. The risks posed by hazards often hinge on questions of how, where, what, and why regarding the technical work.
Use the THINK acronym
Another tool to help improve communication is the THINK acronym, which stands for true, helpful, inspiring, necessary, and kind. Framing lab risk conversations around THINK helps to promote better human interactions and to keep the dialogue more helpful and caring. Sometimes risk conversations can get heated and emotional. This is a good way to focus on helping people through the process.
Keep it human
The American Society of Safety Professionals states that its mission is to protect people, property, and the environment. People come first for a reason. Lab safety prioritizes human health and safety. Lab safety leaders can emphasize the human connections around lab safety and risk by using storytelling, talking about the emotions involved, and sharing lessons from our own experiences.
Closing thought
Risk communication is about active listening and effective sharing. When done proactively and driven by a focus on human health and safety, communicating about lab risks can be a key driver to a better lab safety culture.
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