Why people violate rules

A culture of myths. Detroit breakfast nov slides pcl. Safety as a business output. Related Books Free with a 30 day trial from Scribd.

Shut Up and Listen! Related Audiobooks Free with a 30 day trial from Scribd. Think Like a Billionaire James Altucher. Views Total views. Actions Shares. No notes for slide. Why we violate the rules 1. The Intents and Purpose of Rules: 4. Reason 1: Misinterpretation of the Rule 5.

Reason 2: Distraction 6. A Final Thought On Rules Questions and Comments COM For copies of this presentation follow the link at www. Total views 1, On Slideshare 0. From embeds 0. Number of embeds 2. A seasoned smoker may unintentionally break the law by lighting a cigarette immediately upon leaving a building, easily forgetting that the new rule is in place. While some habits are extremely difficult to break, support and education can turn an old habit into a distant memory.

Some people knowingly break rules when they become inconvenient. A previous blog post at The Safety Report outlined the story of an experienced restaurant cook who took a shortcut and suffered a minor, but pride-hurting injury.

He later admitted that he was just trying to save time by not walking to grab a ladder to reach something on the top shelf of his kitchen. This situation is not unusual. While rules may seem arbitrary, more often than not, they are there for a reason.

The trick is to make sure those reasons justify the extra work and that your employees are onboard. If your company is experiencing a significant influx of these problems, you might want to look at the organization. If workers are consistently breaking rules and procedures they find difficult or time consuming, it may be time to revisit the need for such processes. You may consider a process management consultant to help trim the fat and remove obstacles to employee productivity.

In some cases, a person is placed in a job with little chance to express their individuality. For those who speed, the probability of a negative outcome seems remote, while the likelihood of reward almost certain.

So in terms of workplace safety, a primary driver of willful violation is that the reward is great often the safety protocol is an inconvenience and can be time-consuming.

In general, people violate work rules many, many times without suffering injuries — and the payoff is often being treated as a hero for getting the job done quickly. They were put on the books at a time when they seemed necessary, but have since outlived their usefulness.

In other cases, standards are still required for very good reasons, but those reasons are never adequately explained to the worker. Both claims are specious arguments, but the beliefs persist, so the rules do not seem to make sense. Often people will seek out information that supports what they already believe and ignore the information that refutes it. I know of workplaces that have wall-to-wall eye protection requirements even though the law specifically requires eye protection on only a handful of operations.

That rule is in place because enforcing the requirement for a handful of workers would be onerous. Workers in those facilities can become skeptical of all work rules when they discover that many requirements are in place solely to make enforcement easier.

Rules that are poorly communicated frequently lack this critical component. People need to believe that the rules are a reasonable response to a real and serious danger.