Circus of Safety Episode 9

Well, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the “Circus of Safety” video cast where Andy, Dez, and I, Brenton, guide you through the thrilling world of workplace safety with laughter, knowledge, and a wee little touch of magic.  Welcome to the show, folks. Its Season 1, Episode 9. Here we are. You wouldn’t believe it. Literally moments before going live, my graphics card has appeared to have given up the ghost. But, nonetheless, listen, just wanted to, touch on last fortnight’s episode.

Team, I believe we spoke about AI and, the use of AI in health and safety, and the comments that we got through actually were pretty fantastic. And just wanted to share one that, popped up a bit later on in the piece.  This is from a gentleman in, over in Australia by the name of Nathan Winter. Nathan, a big fan of the show, well, I’m just going to say he is, and his comments were as follows: “AI cannot only be used for shortlisting candidates but also conducting the interviews, where it can track verbal movements and facial responses to gauge confidence and assuredness.”

And he’s also kindly left us a, weird little article up there on the, comment section. So yes, some really scary and fascinating insights into AI, in the last episode there, gentlemen. So, yeah, really cool. Andy, what have you been up to this last week?  Mainly thinking, “Wow, that hurt a lot,” mainly contemplating the concept of the, “Circus of Safety Dictionary.” “Wow, we’re still running with this, are we?” “Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, it’s going to be a real thing.” the first step, of course, was to decide which language, we’re going to do it in. “Okay, and, basically, we’re doing it in English. I won’t go into the reasons behind that, but it’s mainly to do with it’s the language that I speak. Fair enough, okay, perfect, good to know.” listen now, Dez, I’m really hoping you’ve had something a bit more entertaining in the last fortnight, mate.

Well, it’s debatable, but I, a couple of days ago, put a post-up on LinkedIn.  It was about colour blindness in the workplace and the use of colour coding. Yes, and it just, it garnered some really interesting responses. And, I’m tempted to get it added to the, Spinning Wheel of Death. Nice, something we could talk about. What do you reckon? I’m thinking. So, was there any particular reason why you, why it, I guess, gained some interesting responses? What, what quick summary, if you will, maybe. Well, without going into too much detail, basically, there was a post about the colour of his shirts, which I shared, yes, and then further commented that, you know, whenever we talk about colours of his shirts in the workplace or colour coding generally, whether it be hard hats or traffic light dashboards, colour blindness hardly ever gets a mention. And some of the comments were quite dismissive.

They said, “I can’t believe we’re debating his colour of his shirts again, and you know, other more important things to talk about.” And whenever I’m struck with something that doesn’t make sense to me, I run through a little mental exercise and I substitute one thing for another and create a bit of an analogy and see if it still makes sense. So I thought, okay, well, let’s substitute C blindness for persons confined to a wheelchair, perhaps, and let’s substitute colour coding to building access. So if you made a post about wheelchair access to a building, yeah, would people, do you think, still make a similar comment? You know, “Why are we talking about this when people are getting being run over by mobile PL?” And it just created a very interesting thought experiment for me, yeah, for sure. Well, mate, I think let’s have a bit of a think on how we could summarize it up into a pie of the puzzle, a piece of the puzzle, on the old spinning wheel, for sure, cool.  Hey, Andy, list over the last couple of fortnights or so, any wonderful words or pearls of wisdom from the world of training in safety mode?

Wow, no. God, we’ve had this conversation. We’ve even written a script on how the show’s going to go, yes, no. Yes, the pearl of wisdom, and is, was that I spoke at a couple of safety days, so there were big numbers there, and historically at those, people sort of get preached to for 45 minutes, right? Speak, he comes on, talks 45 minutes, next, and I thought, you know what, I’m going to teach it more like a classroom activity, so I ended up developing the workers were doing stuff so it’s just like a massive classroom, so I had 90 pens, paper, and where they went? Andy, that is.

Are you, doing some house cleaning or something in the background there, mate? It’s not me, not you. Oh, don’t know what’s going on there. Might be me. I’ve got a gardener right behind me, so I’ll mute while that’s happening. Sorry, guys. No, good. Good to know that Dez is supporting the local economy.  Okay, well, hey, let’s get on with this show. Tim, we’re not here to talk about ourselves. We’re here to talk about the spinning whatever lands on the spinning wheel of death. But before we get started, Dez, pearl mate, could we please have our disclaimer? Yeah, sure thing, and, and look, I’m, I’m inspired.

I flew recently for work on a big jet plane and I really admired the way the airline cabin announcements were made. So I thought we could do today’s disclaimer in the form of a cabin announcement, and I’ve, I’ve got a special announcing tool. I had to go airside to get this, so you’d be pleased to know it’s, it is in fact certified to B1t. I believe that’s a British standard.  So anyway, let’s, cue the airplane noises and get into it. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, the Circus of Safety Podcast would like to welcome you on this podcast today. We ask that you switch your phones to flight mode now, and although open chat functions are closed for the podcast, feel free to use the chat function located on the left of the screen.

The Circus of Safety provides information during the show, which is of a general nature only. We ask that if you need specific information specific to your circumstances, you engage a specialist adviser in that field. Very soon, we’ll be serving some tasty dialogue with your choice of volume. We ask that you sit back, relax, and enjoy this podcast, and we thank you for choosing to listen to the Circus of Safety today.’

Wow, thank you, Dez.  That was, I take my head off to you.  the effort that you put into this is well above and beyond anything Andy and I do, and I, I just need to commend you on the great work you’ve done. This just really wanted to commend you, okay. Team, are we ready for this, the spinning wheel of death? any nervousness there, Dez, this week about what the wheel might land on? Yeah, there’s probably only one topic on there that I reckon I could confidently speak on. Some, fingers crossed for that one. Wow, I’m just looking at the numbers, mate. There’s a lot of topics up on the wheel.

So to only have confidence in one is a bit concerning. Andy, yourself, mate, are you across most of them? I think so, I think I could do a reasonable job of most of them. What about yourself, Brenton? What are you hoping for? Oh, mate, listen, I’ve got to be honest, it was off a recent conversation this week,  and recently added to the spinning wheel, and that is the impact health and safety is having on general, just, just life in general, mate, and it seems to be affecting stuff well beyond just the workplace. So, hoping it lands on that one.  okay, are we ready for this team? Here we go. The wheel will be spun. Whoa, the risk Matrix.  I can see Andy lighting up with joy here. This is super exciting. So, today’s topic is going to be all about the risk Matrix.  Now, that’s going to be phenomenal.  I’ve got to be fair, that is, I wasn’t expecting that, to be honest. I thought, who, what are the odds? What are the odds? I’m going to come to Andy last on this one. So, one sentence word, your initial shock to the topic of the risk Matrix coming up on the spinning wheel. Yeah, so this wasn’t the topic that I was, comfortable speaking about. I might be able to get it together by the end of the show. Let’s see how we go. Well, okay, this could be, this could be awkward.  Andy, your one sentence, a word, maybe your initial shock relating to the fact, delight. Absolute delight.

Well, good to see clearly Andy’s going to carry us this episode. About time he finally stepped up and did something on the show, to be fair. Absolutely phenomenal.  Hey, listen, I’ve got to be fair, I’m, I’m quite excited about this.  the only reason, and this was, this was kind of linking back to Des’ earlier comments about colour. Bess. I mean, I, I really factor in the fact that I, what I, I’m excited about this topic purely because of the colours. I love colours, and there’s just,  to prelude to our conversation about,  you know, the colour blindness and considering that as part of our approach to safety, which will be a topic we had, I go with what looks good against my complexion.

So I, as long as I look good in it, I’m, I’m happy to roll with that, and that’s what I like about the risk Matrix. It’s got so many colours, so pretty, really. I guess, for one of a better word, well, with that in mind, let’s start, I guess. There, I’ll take you off the hook a little bit here, and we’ll jump over to Andy to start this conversation about the risk Matrix. So, Andy, thinking about the, the, I don’t know, is it a topic, is it a subject, is it a tool,  maybe that’s something we’ll come out with at the end of this, but thinking about the risk Matrix, Andy, I’d love to get your understanding on it. What, what is your thoughts about the risk Matrix?  I think it, sorry, like many things in safety, it’s primarily a tool, but I think it’s massively misused and misunderstood.

In fact, I know it is in New Zealand, and I think it actually does more harm than good in terms of safety performance. Okay, those are some pretty big, pretty big statements. Can I keep going? Oh, go listen, don’t let me stop you, you’re carrying the show. So, it was interesting that you talked about colours because most businesses in New Zealand use a risk Matrix, and often they don’t know why they’re using it, and they don’t use it correctly, and one of the reasons I think that they, they use it is because of the colours.

So, if we go back in time, we go back to sort of 1992 when safety wasn’t a thing in New Zealand, and then suddenly the ’92 act came into place, it was enforced in April, ’83, and then suddenly everyone was terrified about safety, so they went on a load of safety courses. Now, for our younger listeners, I know they won’t appreciate this, but colour printing was extortionately expensive back then, so the companies that were delivering the safety training courses would print their manuals in black and white, but they would save their pennies up, and there would be one page in the book that would be in colour, and it would be the risk Matrix.

Imagine you turn up to your safety training course, you’ve got a manual in front of you with 200 pages in it, and only one page is in colour. When you go back to work and asked what was good about the safety course, they’ll say lunch, and they’ll remember the one page, the risk Matrix, and therefore, everyone thought we’ve got to have a matrix, and I think that’s why this country is completely obsessed with it. So, I’m just going to ask Andy, so again, our younger viewers may not appreciate this, but do you remember the Cinema, you know, the place you’d go to watch movie, the cinema? Yep, yep, yep, Cinema. Now, there was this  the toys, there was this belief that um what happened in the cinemas is they would infuse subliminal messages into the reel um that was being shown up on the screen and um and also as they moved to digital, the same thing, they were putting up these micro flashes on the screen, so that you’re sitting there and kind of looking to watch the movie, and suddenly you feel like popcorn, and you’re like, ‘Wow, I wonder why I feel like popcorn.’

The conspiracy theorists of the world would suggest that it was the subliminal messaging that they’re pushing through the, you know, the on the screen.  Are you suggesting now, based on what I’ve heard you say, that potentially the state of the nation’s obsession with risk management is due to subliminal messaging? Well, you could put it that way. I wouldn’t, but you could. Just wanted to be clear on it because  what, don’t think there was any intent there, I think it was unintentional, but I think the reason that if you talk to people about safety, they tend to talk about the Matrix because it’s a colourful thing and therefore can link into it.

And so, would you suggest that maybe it wouldn’t have been or it wouldn’t be such a fad or an obsession if it had been in black and white? I, I believe so. Wow, okay, some, no evidence to back this up whatsoever, but I just, it’s just for me, it sort of makes sense. Oh, you got your wit, your charm, your education, your years of experience, surely that’s got to count for something, right? But I just, I’m glad, I just wanted to clear the fact that this show is not about conspiracy theories, we’re not about publishing them, we’re about uncovering the truth, right, that’s what we’re all about.

Jump in, I know this isn’t a topic that you were excited about popping up on the, on the wheel, but it, it didn’t less, so,  I guess we just got to suck it up a little bit here, buddy.  what, what is your understanding of it, mate, the risk Matrix? So, if just for the sake of clarity, we’re talking about the table that has consequence down one side and likelihood across another axis, and then you, you draw in, we’re not talking about that, or we are, we sort of are, but I would just like to say the, the reality is it shouldn’t be consequence, it should be severity.

Wow, but we’ve got a table and it’s Got red, orange RS, so I’ve sometimes seen that called a risk calculator. Wow, and the gardener started up next to me, so if you can’t hear me properly, let me know, but, I found them to be, they’re quite subjective, which is no surprise, it’s, it’s a qualitative risk assessment, but they rarely inform a decision. I find that they really just, affirm what someone already thinks about a hazard or a risk. They don’t really add any value in that sense, they’re not in informing a decision.

And if the definition of risk is the UNC, the effect of uncertainty on the effect of uncertainty on objectives, then to reduce that uncertainty, you need to inform yourself, and I don’t think a risk Matrix does that well. Okay, not fair point. That’s interesting, Dez. Could you, Dez, just a second, could you get your butler to go and get the garden quietened down? Dead said they’re like whipper snipping right outside the window, it’s incredible. Do these people not know who you are, this, that you’re a world-class, podcaster, delivering a really important message to the world to save lives?

Do they not appreciate that? I think they might be doing it unsafely too. Maybe there’s an intervention. Oh, oh, actually, Des, I think you’ve just taken the show to another level, mate. Could you pop outside and ask them if they have undertaken a risk assessment and if so, did they use a Matrix to determine their controls in place? Well, I can’t see a test tag thing on their on their power cord, so maybe I need to confiscate that, and that’ll, that’ll solve both problems. That will indeed, that will indeed.  Wow, okay, so, what’s your take on it, what’s your take on it, Brenton, come on, what’s your take on it? Thank you for asking, Andy. It’s about time you showed a little bit of consideration towards others. So, my take on it, so what is my take on it? I think it’s, it’s fascinating, right? I, I think it, I’m not a fan, I’m just going to put that out there. I’m not a fan of the Matrix.

In fact, I think I often finish any posts that I might put on LinkedIn with hashtag burn the Matrix, but apparently that’s not environmentally friendly because now we’re putting chemicals up into the air because they’ve used colour printing and oh, it’s just, it’s, it’s, it’s just a spiralling Rabbit Hole here, really. But yeah, I mean it’s, I get the concept and I like, and again, this is going to be interesting when this topic comes up on the, on the wheel. I like the simplification of the Matrix for, for some people, and listen, let’s be fair here, safety is not sexy, right? Safety is as boring as all hell, and to introduce something with a little bit of Pizza, a little bit of bang, a little bit of power, is quite cool, I think, and it adds, it just makes it a bit more attractive, and anything we can do to get people engaged in safety, I think is half the battle.

Engaging people in safety is half the battle, and if the Matrix is the thing that does that well, then I suppose maybe it does have a place, but yeah, for me, not a fan. one of my, and I think as Dez was kind of alluding to possibly,  was the subjectivity, subjectiveness, I think is the way to describe that of the use of the tool,  in, in both on both axes. I mean, asking someone to S, to have a guess really at the likelihood of something happening, I mean, well, firstly, I think Andy, you and I have been talking about this many times, the PE people are confused about what they’re trying to assess the likelihood of it.

Absolutely, that’s half the better, right? So, if I’m assessing the likelihood of the event taking place and you’re assessing the likelihood of the outcome taking place, regardless of whether we’re looking at the same thing, it’s not going to be the same outcome, right?  Absolutely, and then again, if we, we, I think we possibly touched on this over some of our conversations which may have inspired this entire wonderful world of podcasting, if we are, assessing the likelihood of something, regardless of which we think we should be assessing, you know, like, we can’t just put our, our finger on our mouth, suck on it, put it up in the sky and hope that we’re going to get a result, right? We really need to go back and really understand, you know how we made that assessment of likelihood.

Is it based on, what we’re feeling like on the day, you know, we’ve had a bit of Dutch courage so suddenly the likelihood of something happening is less,  you know, and again, so, so that subjectivity, it’s not based on anything other than,  just somebody’s perception. And, and then coming down the other axis is the consequence, and this severity, severity, severity, severity of the consequence, sorry, Andy, thank you, appreciate that, I’m glad to see you’re contributing, it’s super important that we, again, you know, this is subjective. Again, if, if you are a pessimist, you know, everything’s going to kill you, right?

Or, the severity of everything’s going to be really horrible and bad, and the world is a dark and horrible place.  and that might be where you, in that pessimistic kind of space, right? But on, on the flip side, where you’re a bit more like De and myself, a bit more optimistic about life and the gloriousness of it, you’re going to say nothing’s going to,  it’s not that bad, right? I mean, what’s the lost limb, it’s not that serious, you know, hey, I can still get around with one, so yeah, just so subjective. Yet, the fascinating thing for me is, and Andy, you’ll remember this day where you, you left me hanging.

No, this is not true at all, this is, I’m true, I’m going to share a moment here, but what, what fascinates me about this, you know, when, when you talk about it with so many safe people, they all agree. Well, I shouldn’t say they all agree, there might be some people that are dumbfounded and still sucked into the, the colour printing page of it all, but being so subjective, the fact that as professionals, so many people hang on this as the foundation for a risk assessment is phenomenal.

And I’ll never forget, we, we, we had helped a specific organization, no names will be mentioned here, to develop some training, and this training was an introduction to introductory training to health and safety, and Andy and I were part of the development team, and as part of that, we chose not to put the risk Matrix into the training material, and there I was, and Andy was like, oh…

I can’t be there for the whole delivery, so you need to be up front, you need to be delivering this training. As we hit the risk topic, we started talking about risk, and I then just casually moved on and clicked the next slide, and well, blow me over, the scathing comments, the, the,  I think we almost had cheers thrown, Andy, if I remember correctly,  I remember, you know, looking up, and it was like a scene out of the movie The Exorcist, and I was looking for Andy for support, and Andy was cowering under a table, and the fact that we had chosen not to put a risk Matrix in this training manual, it was like we had committed the ultimate of the 10 sins, you know, and it was amazing, but, but then again, you talk to people in a rational context without the pack mentality of a group of health and safety professionals, they all agree that it’s, it’s, it’s a ridiculous tool, but no one wants to publicly admit it, and I guess I’m, I’m, I’m trying to, trying to do that now,  but no, so fast, so that’s those are my thoughts, sorry, I don’t know, I probably took up too much of the show with that…

We’ve got Keith Harvey joining in, thank you, Keith, it’s about time somebody bought some normality to the show.  Keith’s got a comment here, because they are qualitative and not quantitative, designed by individuals rather than collectively, they justify ours not analysis. Wow, and I think that’s kind of where you going maybe, Dez, with that, is it makes you feel better about the decision that you’ve already made, you know,  and, and I guess that’s a bit, a bit concerning, so de back up to you, hopefully you can come back to the show,  now that you’ve confiscated the,  the gardening equipment, I mean, do, do you feel the risk Matrix as we know it, or the risk calculator, or,  I don’t know, is this also sometimes referred to as a heat map,  I don’t know, do you feel it has place in the safety mate, and, and if so, what is that place that it has?

I don’t think it does. I think there’s been some recent studies that have shown that qualitative risk assessments are not effective and not accurate,  and it just, interestingly, I saw from WorkSafe Victoria in the a jurisdiction where safe work method statements in construction of compulsory, it’s prescribed by the regulations that you must use them, they offer a template, safe work method statement, and their most recent version released, 12 October 2023, wow, doesn’t have a risk calculator in or a risk Matrix, they’ve taken it out.

Wow, Dez, it’s great to see you’re at The Cutting Edge of what’s happening internationally, and, and because I guess it pays that because we have got  you know, international audiences here tuning in, so great for you to reach out to  our Australian can colleagues, so good effort and great to see, though, that a,  not a legislator, sorry, what, what, what would they be called, Safe Work Australia,  Safe Worker, you know, the organizations, the regulator, being so, I mean, that would have been a bold move for them, right?  Massively bold move, and recently too, which is fantastic to see.  brilliant. Andy, your thoughts, do you feel the risk Matrix has a place in the Safetyville, and what is that place? Possibly has a place.

I think if I may, I’ll let go back a step. What I find a little bit frustrating when I have these conversations is that people automatically go back to the qualitative, it’s judgmental, it’s subjective, and I agree with all of that, but fundamentally the way that organizations use risk matrices is incorrect. That’s the real problem, is that they use this tool, but they use it incorrectly. So it doesn’t matter how subjective it is or not, the fact that you’re using it incorrectly is really the issue, and you guys both sort of move towards using it incorrectly because the term consequence shouldn’t be on there because the consequence is a set outcome when really the risk Matrix, it comes from the insurance industry, and that’s where it works really well is the two axes are independent of each other, they’re discrete. So one axis is about likelihood, is it going to happen, is it never going to happen, it’s dead simple.

The other axis has got to be the same, it’s how bad could it be, it’s not bad or it’s very bad. Now, if those two things remain as continuums, the risk metric works. Now what we’ve done in New Zealand, most organizations have done, is firstly, they, like you indicated Brenton, they haven’t defined what it’s the likelihood of, and if you read a lot of documents around how to use a risk Matrix, it says it’s the likelihood of harm, and that’s not right because it’s the likelihood of an event combined by the severity of the outcome of that event, that those two things are completely separate, and there’s some quite cool ways of showing it, which I’d love to be able to do, so maybe we could do a, we could go offline and do a master class in the risk Matrix or something where we’ve got some images that we can use to help people understand this.

So Andy, just real quick, jump in there then, so severity of the consequence, so is that not the same as an outcome, so like death, for example, or broke no, no, so you can’t, no, and this is the whole point, it’s got to be a Continuum so if you think about that, it’s made up of two bits, so it’s likelihood and severity, yep, now you’ve got this event in the middle, so it’s the likelihood of the event and the spity of the event, death doesn’t isn’t an outcome or isn’t a consequence because you can’t reduce the severity of it, you can’t reduce the severity of death, right, you can’t do it, you did you’re dead right, yeah, absolutely, you can’t be a little bit dead, you’re either dead or you’re not, I got to be honest, after the gym work I had yesterday.

I did feel a little bit dead, yeah, but no, but do you know what I mean, so when you, when you on the axis, when you talk about that, you end up talking if you put death in there, you’re talking about the likelihood of death, not the severity of death, which you can’t alter, so it, I know it’s difficult to explain without the image, but if you use a risk Matrix as a heat map where it’s just, it’s always going to happen, it’s never going to happen, it’s not bad, it’s very bad, that works, but what we’ve tried to do in New Zealand is we’ve tried to break down that severity axis and made it in discrete values, not a Continuum so on the one end, you’ve got multiple ferti, then you’ve got ferality, then you’ve got medical treatment injury, then you’ve got lost time injury, then you’ve got no harm, now the problem there is, is that that’s not a Continuum you know, because you can’t reduce death, you can’t reduce the severity of death, you predefined it.

I mean, I don’t know what Des’ thoughts are, but I refer back to what, I guess I guess we might have, I’m not saying it’s right, but have we gone that way because it’s easy for somebody to go, oh death’s bad, right, and, and so therefore severity is not good,  so we, we, we generally anchor off the result, right, because it’s easy to explain to somebody if somebody’s dead, that’s not a good thing,  if somebody loses an arm, that’s not as bad as death but still not great, right,  listen, if you get a, if you just need a Band-Aid, well, that’s, you know, that, depends what safety person you talk to, I guess, some people might say that’s not acceptable, but, you know, that’s life, right, you move on, so I guess, is have we, and, and this will be interesting again when we start talking about simplification of safety, and, and, and should we go down that road have we, have we anchored off these things to make it easy for people to understand, to simplify safety, therefore have created,  incorrect use of this tool that potentially could be used, yep, absolutely, way more complicated than it needs to be, way more.

Okay, I think I’m done for the show team, I’m out, I’m out, that was my brain wave for the week, I am done, checking out, there’s anything from you, it was worth it. Yeah, look, while I’ve been on mute,  admiring the gardening outside the window, I had a look at the  Health and Safety at Work Act in New Zealand and also the model health and safety legislation from Australia, and the meaning of reasonably practicable, and in New Zealand, it’s section 22, and it doesn’t use the word consequence at all, and it doesn’t use the word severity at all, the words they use is the degree of harm that might result, maybe that means the same thing as severity, I’m not sure, but I thought it was interesting, and that’s mirrored in the Australian legislation, they also  say the degree of harm that are resolve, yes, so degrees, a, a Continuum right, consequence isn’t, consequences of set outcome, that was a big learning curve for me when I first came into safety, you know, you’re learning the difference between  the likelihood, the consequence, whether you’ve had an incident, what severity is, and you know I see this still with people saying oh what’s the hazard or slip trips and falls.

No, they’re consequences, what’s the hazard, what are you slipping on, what are you tripping on,  it’s an important distinction to make and it completely changes the narrative, but there’s a comment here from Dar Cassidy, the duty is to ID hazards, assess risks and apply controls as per the hierarchy of controls so far as is reasonably practicable, as we know matrices add zero value to this process in my opinion, rating Cal risk can be useful when having discussions about risk appetite if control decisions are based on cost, so here we’re not necessarily talking about  using a risk Matrix to do an initial risk assessment, but a residual risk assessment which I think is an interesting point, well no, I’m also glad you read that question out, this, thanks for that, I was sitting here reading it going what the hell is IMO, so  thanks for educating me, this morning, really appreciate that, yeah, no, exactly, and so I think we we’ve touched on some things and Keith Harvey’s jumped in here again.

Why do we use tools when we don’t know why we need to use them, now that raises a fascinating point and it goes back to  an interesting concept that I have, is that it’s all about making money, I personally believe, and I think Andy was probably alluding to that a little bit too when we started printing risk matrices in colour, I think  to be fair, a lot of safety professionals and people would argue that we’re doing that too by what we’re doing here, but it’s all about making yourself invaluable so that people have to use you and if people create the next big whizbang or have a shiny tool or you know I’ve also seen, I don’t know how many retakes on the risk Matrix, people calling it something different, and coming up with different terms and thinking it’s something different when really it’s the same thing just rehashed.

I think a lot of it, Keith, my personal opinion, is its marketing, people sell it, and that’s the reality of the commercial world that we live in and I appreciate they got pretty deep their team so I’m hoping I can bring it back so there’s, I mean, we’ve all been relatively scathing of the risk Matrix, so far if I can sum up the show, but I mean do you see any pros to the use of a matrix anywhere? To be honest, I can’t think of any, no, so just remember that that last show debrief we had, when I ask a question, I generally need more than a new response, we’ve got a certain time slot to fill here and you’re not helping this the situation, here we go, this, what do you think Brent, the question back to you.

Okay, well,  listen, I, I, I do think there are some pros to the risk Matrix, I mean like I said earlier, I think there’s  if  that’s what it takes to get people talking about safety and interested in safety, at the lower levels or the introductory to safety because it’s bright, it’s whiz bangy, it’s colourful or whatever and it’s something tangible for people,  I think there are some pros to it, I do think there is a  pro to it and I think if used again going back to what Andy was saying and I hate to acknowledge that he was probably right but if we use it correctly as a teaching tool I think it’s got a place whether it’s got a place, so I think the one of the key Pros for me would be a teaching tool,  to help people because we’ve often spoken, haven’t we Andy, about knowledge is key, right, when assessing risk, and it helps prompt some really good conversations, I think, and I think that’s where,  Keith mentioned in his earlier outcome too, it’s around, it’s a group initiative, group activity, there can be some pros if used correctly, and we all know what are,  what we’re looking at, so that’s, that’s where I think there are definitely some pros to the space.

I also think, and I don’t know whether I’m Sid stepping the question here de, so feel free to let me know if I am, but I think the biggest Pro is in one of the matrices, I’m a big fan of, dropping the likelihood aspect of the Matrix and focusing purely on the severity, and then often when I’m talking about severity, I, I will,  yeah, I, I will admit I often Anchor It Off the consequence because I think it’s easy for people to  grasp but yeah, so my Pros, great teaching tool if used correctly and  one half of the Matrix is adds value for me because again I’m not a Believer, I mean I know I know the legislation talks about it,  but let let’s be fair if you’ve killed somebody you’ve killed somebody, you can’t walk up to somebody and say “Hey listen I’m really sorry I killed your son, but it was a one in a million chance, right, at the end of the day you’ve killed somebody and that individual that family, isn’t going to care what the likelihood of that is, right, and so I believe,  the bottom half or the, the one of the axes of the Matrix has a pro. Andy, any pros from you mate for the use of this tool?

I don’t, I don’t buy into any of your Pros by the way,  good thing I didn’t ask your opinion, just put it out there, you know the bands only just regrouped after a pretty like close call to splitting up and you’re already going down this road again mate, this is, that’s, that’s how many words Brenton said over a thousand words in that answer, I was counting, I’m impressed, 1,237 words, we, we have got, we’ve got a show to F mate, got to use words. So I guess broad broadly speaking if we ban the use of The Matrix, not I’m in favour of such things, I think safety would be better in New Zealand, wow, good call mate.

Big call, because I think people would focus on what matters, no let me finish let me finish I’ve got another 1,462 words to go, and the reason is that is it’s a distraction, it doesn’t have value and people focus on giving it a number where it means nothing what people should be focusing on is understanding what a hazard is and understanding what controls should be in place and understanding what causes controls to fail if people focus on those three things they’ll be safe and the whether it’s a green a yellow or orange or a red it makes no difference whatsoever it’s just a massive distraction.

I think the possibly the only benefit from it is that it   does trigger thought an analysis and discussion like we’re having discussion about it now and it’s bringing up a load of other issues, around risk. Well you see hang on just stop right there there’s a pro and it’s one of the ones that I said and which you on air categorically denied that you agreed with so now you have just uncovered the truth, I’m so glad you don’t get defensive, okay moving on, play Devil’s advocate for a second, go for it, there somebody’s got to save the show so if you’re not using a risk Matrix to demonstrate that you’ve considered the likelihood and the degree of harm or the severity then how are you providing evidence that you’ve met that legislative requirement because the legislative requirement is as laws reasonably practicable so then you would measure what you’ve done against either standards legislation guidance you competitors industry best practice.

That’s all that matters it doesn’t matter whether it’s a seven or an eight what matters is are you doing what you should be doing and the risk Matrix gives you 22 defines reasonably practicable defines it in terms of likelihood and degree of harm so you’re suggesting that um it’s not a number but then how would you if you’re not using a risk Matrix how would you provide evidence of that well the fact that you’ve considered it would that not suggest that you’ve You’ you’ve already appreciated the fact that the likelihood of it occurring is real and that’s enough because the law doesn’t say how you have to assess the light the fact that you’ve thought about it would suggest that you’ve considered it likely uh and again I go back to the argument that I think the Law’s wrong.

I’m just going to put that out there I think it’s a lot of hogwash I think they need to redefine reasonably practical and remove the word uh likelihood because again I f somebody came to me and said, ‘I’m sorry I’ve killed your son, but don’t worry, the likelihood was incredibly low that that was going to happen,’ I, I as a parent, I wouldn’t find that acceptable and, and I don’t think, I don’t think the law should, and I don’t think,  I don’t think we should think, you’ve, this is one of the benefits of this, is you’ve touched on something else there that I think needs to go on the spinning wheel of death, but the law is wrong, no, no, well possibly, but I think also around that idea of, does likelihood matter, because I think it, I think it does, and we’ve spoken about this many times before, and it, it depends entirely on your point of view and what you’re trying to achieve.

Whether it, but it goes back to the likelihood of what though? I think critical, and, and I’m going to go back, I’ve only just thought of this on the Fly, which I’m, I’m going to hang on to like,  like gold, a golden nugget right now, I, I think the fact that you have considered it would suggest that you believe it is likely that it could occur, regardless of what you’re believing the likelihood is of, you, you’ve thought about it, there’s your likelihood,  of it occurring, absolutely, you haven’t thought about it, yep, and, and referring to, regulations, standards, that that’s all packed into that as well, isn’t it, that’s considering it, yeah, so, hey, before we, we are running out of time, time flies when you’re having fun.

Rob boys, hey Dez,  just a couple of thoughts on you, what do you see, and we’ve probably touched on this throughout the show, but any sort of traps, you see people falling into with the with the Matrix, one common way I said apply is that people try and reduce the consequence, and I’m choosing that word very carefully, they try and reduce the consequence, whereas um a better use of the tool, if you are going to be determined to use it, would be that you can only reduce the likelihood, for the same reason that any discussed before, you can’t reduce the severity of death, you can’t reduce the severity of a 5-meter Fall by um using a harness, you’re just reducing the likelihood, yeah, cool, great.

 I tend to agree with you Des, I mean I do on a regular basis, and tend to agree there, Andy, your thoughts around, any traps for people when using the Matrix, oh the traps are everywhere, the traps are absolutely everywhere with it, and  one of the biggest traps is, I think, is the false sense of security that it gives people and  yeah, that that that happens a lot,  people will, it at a certain number because there’s less work to do if they keep it at that number, so if  it’s in the green they can just get on and do the work, if it’s in the orange they’ve got to turn the sheet over and fill in some more details, no one’s going to do an orange cost, it’s more work, yeah God I hate to say this again I tend to agree Andy, and yeah I think in summary that those one of the traps right, as organizations we set benchmarks and I think that’s a trap for organizations setting benchmarks using the Matrix, and by doing that.

The Trap there is people will give you the score they want to give you to reduce the burden, on them, so again it’s like sitting and I know this is another topic on the spinning wheel,  but the  it sets a Target and people will either aim to hit or go below the target, I just want to acknowledge Sarah Tizard, kindred spirit in safety, I would describe her as a kindred spirit in safety, surely the fact you highlighted it within your swims and have said you believe you need to put controls in place to prevent it shows you believe there is a likelihood of it occurring and need to reduce that,  kindred spirit Sarah, kindred spirit, don’t let these other two naysayers put you no, I appreciate what Sarah said there.

The word it, the likelihood of it occurring, what occurring, come on Sarah, specify, wow, throwing down the challenges, he’s a big man isn’t he, there’s behind a computer screen there, wow, it’s amazing, hey it’s almost like he’s got a like a like he’s  you know since we’ve introduced this concept of the circus of safety and we’ve got these logos and Andy’s got this like Shield behind him,  he’s like oh he’s throwing it Down Right throwing it down, it’s a bit of that and a bit of frustration with the industry, fair enough M,  as we come to the end of the show,  your final thoughts wrap up on the topic of the risk Matrix.

I think it might be worthwhile as doing something around this  a deeper dive into this, I think maybe nice goal like it de,  your thoughts wrap up, final considerations for the topic of the risk matric, yeah I think it’s worth any organization reconsidering whether they get any value out of it,  and it might be a n opportunity to reduce some safety clutter, and with my um with my comment earlier about how do you, how do you prove that you’ve considered the likelihood and the degree of harm, I would argue that you would do that most effectively through conduct rather than a piece of paper,  but in addition to that, I’ve been admiring the gardening outside the window, and the hedges look really, really nice.

It’s really good, they’ve done a good job, fantastic, fantastic,  anyone lost a limb or anything while doing your hedges, they’re all good, and they weren’t actually using electrical cables, it was all petrol motor, but Sarah Tizard has laid down the challenge, Andy, there’s a coffee pending, oh beautiful, Sarah, Andy will shout the coffee and throw in some cake, and you’ll put it through as the marketing budget for the Circus of Safety,  if you could please record the conversation and how you bring him to his knees, that’ll be valuable, and we will, produce that as a live show,  listen, my final thoughts, my wrap-up on the tag on the conversation, hash burn the Matrix,  so, as we move on,  anything exciting over the next couple of weeks, de,  yes, there’s a symposium coming up that I’m, I’m probably going to attend, nice, when is that, it’s Tuesday the 24th of October, wow, that would that be the same one that I’m going to be at Body chins, yeah, is it, yeah, oh wow, okay, yeah, let’s move on.

Andy, anything exciting for you over the next couple of weeks, you’ve just made me very nervous because I think the guest speaking might be turning up on the 26th, you are kidding me, you had one job, one job, wow, okay, so yeah no great,  this is, a yeah, that there is an exciting Symposium coming up.

It’s the Circus of Safety Spring Symposium our first ever, this Tuesday in Auckland, we will be recording, and we will be making some of that those recordings available, and look forward to those that will be attending.

Thanks to those that reached out, sorry I haven’t had a chance to publicly name them, but we have reached out behind the scenes and let them know that their tickets will be waiting for them at the entry, and a gold coin donation is all that is required to get in, so massive thank you to them,  listen, I’m going to shout out, again, we, the fact that we, one of the driving forces behind us doing this was purely some therapy for the three of us, the fact that we have people tuning in and listening,  is  is empowering really I think would be the word to SC it, it’s the feedback we get is great, and it’s morphing into one of its own things, but  I’m hoping um I pronounced this name right but I just want to do a shout out to one of our recent followers on um the Secret Safety LinkedIn page.

And that’s Shell Mataza Polus, I think I might have Polus I think I might have got, from Auckland, thank you for joining in, hopefully you’ve tuned in to the show today, and look forward to seeing you comment, as we as we make our way down this little um rabbit hole that we call the circus of safety video cast, so again, listen, shamelessly, clearly I, I’m clearly struggling with my it.

So, we’ve already had a sponsor reach out, a potential sponsor reach out for the show, we are working with them closely, but if anyone wants to maintain um sponsorship through it, donations like you know, upgrading me from my Commodore 64, to allow my card to keep up, I will shamelessly plug you, on every show, everywhere I go, I do have a preference, I would love to go down the road of maybe an Apple device of some sort.

I’m not fussy though, so I will also  I will accept a Windows Surface Pro,  happily,  but yeah, it’s got to be capable of  managing and wrangling these two morons, I mean, I mean these two great guys,  so yeah, feel free to reach CH if you’d like to sponsor me, personally individually, because the other thing that’s super exciting there you go, you got a MacBook, you’ve got a Mac, got a MacBook, nice, there we go,  thank you Alexandria.

I’ll post you my address,  super excited team,  you might have seen a little LinkedIn post that I did,  really excited to be joining NEOS, at their online conference this year as a panellist, to talk about coaching and mentoring in the health and safety space, so more details to follow on my LinkedIn page, but really excited to be part of that and can’t wait to get involved,  and catch up with that and have a conversation, so gentlemen as always it’s been nothing but a pleasure,  take care over the next couple of weeks and look forward to catching up soon, see you guys, thanks guys, see you.