In brief: the key findings
- The study: Of the 11 office workers, seven – that is, 64 per cent – reported that they had experienced the period before the accident as especially demanding.
- Rest: At the same time, all nine employees reported that in the 1–3 months before the accident they had not been able to pay enough attention to their rest.
- Limitation: These data do not in themselves prove that burnout caused the accidents examined.
- Fitness for work: Of the 11 office workers, only two knew that being fit for work does not simply mean being free of alcohol and drugs, but that being properly rested and in a suitable mental state is also an important condition.
- Just culture: The just culture approach differs from a no-consequences approach precisely in that it distinguishes between human error, negligent behaviour and deliberate rule-breaking.
- The law: Hungary’s Act XCIII of 1993 on occupational safety also names the concept of psychosocial risk, and taking these factors into account also plays an important part in the employer’s risk assessment.
- Accident investigation: When investigating a workplace accident, “they were inattentive” is therefore not necessarily an answer.
Burnout, mental exposure and their possible links to workplace accidents
When investigating workplace accidents we often come across familiar findings: inattention, unsafe working practice, failure to use personal protective equipment or simply overconfidence. These findings, however, often describe only what happened immediately before the accident, and pay less attention to the question of what led to that behaviour.
Why was the employee inattentive? Why did they ignore a rule they otherwise knew? Why did they not use the protective equipment available to them? Why did they make a decision that, in other circumstances, they themselves might have judged dangerous?
As an occupational safety professional, I have spent several years shaping the safe framework of work. My experience has increasingly drawn my attention to the fact that workplace safety is not solely a technical, regulatory and organisational matter. One of the most important elements of the system is the person themselves, who does not start every working day in the same mental and emotional state.
Chronic stress, lasting exhaustion, loss of motivation, workplace conflicts or even problems in private life do not automatically stay outside the workplace gate. They can affect attention, decision-making, rule-following and ultimately safe work as well. The starting point of my study was to examine psychosocial factors and burnout not only as a mental health problem, but also from an occupational safety perspective.
The invisible risks of occupational safety
In traditional occupational safety thinking, easily identifiable hazards naturally receive a lot of attention. We examine machines, work equipment, hazardous substances, noise, vibration, the working environment and personal protective equipment.
There is, however, a less visible group of risks as well.
Excessive workload, time pressure, monotonous work, constant availability, unsuitable shift patterns, lack of communication, conflicts with management, lack of recognition, isolation at work and a broken balance between work and private life are all psychosocial factors that can influence an employee’s mental state in the longer term. From an occupational safety point of view, the problem becomes especially interesting when their effect no longer shows only in someone feeling unwell at work.
Lasting stress and exhaustion can lead to difficulty concentrating, reduced cognitive control and poorer decision-making. All of this directly affects the safety of work as well.
“They were inattentive” – but why?
In an accident report, “inattention” can seem an obvious explanation.
From an occupational safety point of view, however, it does not necessarily mark the end of the investigation. In many cases this is exactly where we should be asking the next questions.
Why did they become inattentive?
Were they tired? Had they not slept properly? Were they working under lasting time pressure? Had the work process become monotonous for them? Had they lost their motivation? Was a problem in their private life taking up their attention? Do they work in an organisational environment where they do not dare say that they are overloaded or have made a mistake?
An employee’s behaviour cannot be separated from the psychological and organisational environment in which they work.
This of course does not mean that burnout lies behind every case of inattention or rule-breaking, nor that the employee’s individual responsibility disappears. The real question is rather whether further factors can be recognised behind the immediate trigger, factors whose discovery and handling could make similar events preventable.
What did an examination of twenty workplace accidents show?
In my exploratory study of the subject I analysed a total of 20 workplace accidents. Of these, 11 involved employees in office (non-manual) jobs and 9 involved employees in physical jobs. It is important to stress that the study is not representative, so no generally valid causal conclusions can be drawn from its results. It is suitable, however, for drawing attention to some connections worth examining further.
Among the immediate causes of the 11 cases involving office workers, inattention appeared seven times, overconfidence three times and failure to use personal protective equipment once. During the investigation of the accidents, however, questions about the employees’ mental load and rest habits were also included alongside the traditional ones.
The results were remarkable.
Of the 11 office workers, seven – that is, 64 per cent – reported that they had experienced the period before the accident as especially demanding. Nine – that is, 82 per cent – said that they had not been able to pay enough attention to their rest, and seven reported that they had not felt sufficiently productive in the preceding period. Perhaps the most interesting answer, however, came to another question.
Asked whether a problem not directly related to work could have influenced the accident, all 11 employees answered yes. In their words, at the time of the accident they “could not be mentally present”, because they felt tired and exhausted.
A different picture emerged in the nine cases examined in physical jobs. Among the main triggers, failure to use personal protective equipment appeared six times, inattention twice and overconfidence once.
At the same time, all nine employees reported that in the 1–3 months before the accident they had not been able to pay enough attention to their rest. Six of them also experienced a lack of motivation. These data do not in themselves prove that burnout caused the accidents examined. They do show, however, that when investigating accidents it is worth taking employees’ mental load into account as well.
What does being fit for work really mean?
The study pointed to another interesting problem too.
Of the 11 office workers, only two knew that being fit for work does not simply mean being free of alcohol and drugs, but that being properly rested and in a suitable mental state is also an important condition.
The result in physical jobs was even less favourable: of the nine employees, only one connected fitness for work with being properly rested and in a suitable mental state. This also raises an important question about occupational safety training.
We teach employees how to use protective equipment correctly. We talk about dangerous machines, traffic routes, lifting, manual handling and emergencies.
But do we talk enough about the fact that they themselves are part of the safety system?
Mental exposure as a possible occupational safety approach
In the study I used the concept of “mental exposure” to describe this phenomenon.
The concept of exposure is well known in occupational safety: it means being exposed to the effect of a given factor. By analogy, by mental exposure I mean the psychological effects arising during work that can directly influence an employee’s emotional and cognitive state, and through that their decision-making and safe work.
Such a process can be described, for example, as follows:
psychosocial load → lasting stress reaction → exhaustion → declining attention and performance → increasing risk of error.
In this interpretation, burnout is not a state that develops from one day to the next. During the process increased anxiety, tension, difficulty concentrating and sleep problems may appear, which may later be followed by emotional and physical exhaustion, indifference and declining performance.
From an occupational safety point of view, therefore, it is not only fully developed burnout that matters. It may be far more important to recognise what happens to the employee’s safe behaviour during the process.
Safety culture does not mean making errors disappear
Alongside mental load, organisational culture is also decisive.
If at a workplace errors are automatically followed by punishment or humiliation, an environment can easily develop in which employees would rather keep problems quiet. That is why creating psychological safety and applying the just culture approach – a fair safety culture – is especially important.
The aim is not for errors to have no consequences. The just culture approach differs from a no-consequences approach precisely in that it distinguishes between human error, negligent behaviour and deliberate rule-breaking. In this way accountability and fairness can apply at the same time.
In a well-functioning safety culture, therefore, we do not only ask:
“Who made the mistake?”
But also:
“Why could it happen?”
And perhaps even more important:
“What do we need to change so that it does not happen next time?”
Psychosocial risk is an occupational safety risk too
Managing psychosocial factors is not merely a corporate wellbeing programme or an extra offered to employees. Hungary’s Act XCIII of 1993 on occupational safety also names the concept of psychosocial risk, and taking these factors into account also plays an important part in the employer’s risk assessment. In practical occupational safety it may therefore be justified to place greater emphasis on this area.
What is needed is not necessarily more multi-page documents. In many cases it would be more important for the question of a person’s mental state and psychosocial load to appear in risk assessment, in occupational safety training, in management communication and, where relevant, in the investigation of workplace accidents.
When investigating a workplace accident, “they were inattentive” is therefore not necessarily an answer.
It may only be the first answer.
In the end, occupational safety always centres on people
Technical protection, suitable work equipment, regulation, personal protective equipment and occupational safety training remain basic elements of accident prevention. On their own, however, they cannot eliminate every human error.
An employee’s attention, decision-making, motivation and mental state are part of the same safety system. The results of my own exploratory study do not prove that burnout in itself causes workplace accidents. They do show, however, that chronic stress, exhaustion, lack of rest and the state in which someone is “not mentally present” are factors that modern occupational safety should pay greater attention to. This is also in line with the final conclusion of the study: safe work cannot be understood solely in terms of technical factors or individual errors. However good a rule may be, it does not help if the person applying it is no longer able to pay proper attention to it.
And however advanced a safety system may be, it does not help if we fail to notice that the person it should protect is no longer mentally present in it.