Safety Minute: The Dangers of Emotional Stress

Talking Points

• Are supervisors too shy to ask their workers about personal problems?
• Do we understand the risks involved in not knowing the mental state of our employees?
• Can supervisors assign high-risk individuals to lower-risk tasks?

Personal Problems Increase Risk by 50%

Research conducted by the U.K. Royal Navy

• Researchers measured the psychological stress of 153 employees of the U.K. Royal Navy using a questionnaire
• They asked the number of accidents employees had been involved in over a three-year period
• An accident was defined as an injury where the person missed three or more days of work
• Results showed that those people with higher levels of stress had significantly more accidents
• “Accident-prone” people had, on average, 50% more accidents
• People with numerous accidents also reported problems with:
  • concentration
  • remembering instructions
  • physical coordination

Source: Visser, E., et al., “Accident Proneness, Does it Exist? A Review and Meta-Analysis,” Accident Analysis & Prevention, 39 (3), pp. 556–564, www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0001457506001746 (May 2007).

Source: Day, A., et al., “Accident Proneness Revisited: The Role of Psychological Stress and Cognitive Failure,” Accident Analysis & Prevention, 49, pp. 532–535, www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0001457512001170 (Nov. 2012).

3% of Employees Account for 22% of Accidents

Research conducted by Shell

• Researchers at the Shell complex in Deer Park, TX, studied five years of accident records (1981–1986)
• In this five-year span, 7,131 accidents occured:
  • 392 of these accidents were major (OSHA recordable)
  • 6,382 were minor (involved some injury)
  • the remaining accidents involved no injury
• To eliminate some variability, the researchers grouped accidents according to job family:
  • Operations — operator, lab tester
  • Electrical — electrician, instrument mechanic
  • Process — pipefitter, machinist
  • Maintenance — boilermaker, welder
  • Miscellaneous — carpenter, insulator, garage mechanic
• Result: 3.4% of employees accounted for 21.5% of accidents
• The number of employees with multiple accidents was much higher than what would be expected if the accidents were random
• Statistically, the number of employees who should have had 10 accidents during the five-year span is less than one. However, the actual number of employees who had 10 or more accidents during this period was 27

Source: Mayer, D. L., et al., “Accident Proneness in the Industrial Setting,” Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting, 31, pp. 196–198, https://doi.org/10.1177/154193128703100213 (Sept. 1, 1987).