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A Little Challenge For Experienced Safety Professionals Only

A Little Challenge For Experienced Safety Professionals Only

Calling on all experienced Safety Professionals with a sharp mind and a discerning eye…..We all know how important it is to wear as much PPE as possible when working on a construction site – it wont really stop many serious injuries but it does allow the maintenance of control, mean we can pad out inductions, gives a reason to yell at people and creates the illusion of a safe workplace.
Could you please tell me one critical thing that is missing from this sign spotted recently at the entrance to a construction site and what is that telling you about the culture and the approach to safety on this site?:
“Wear 4” – sounds like the beginning of a line from a Shakespeare play……. that line is a clue to the answer to the question above and no it isn’t gloves, hearing protection or a dagger!!!
PPE Man
UPDATE: Well, after a few thousand views nobody has yet solved the puzzle – sometimes the answers can be lost in all the noise, distraction, priming and framing.
In 1999, Daniel Simons and Christopher Chabris conducted a study on the phenomenon of ‘inattentional blindness,’ then publishing their “invisible Gorilla” video, a video which supports their finding that it is incredibly easy for people to miss details in visual information simply because they are not looking for them and are so focussed on the obvious. Their research was presented as a test for the public in a video released in 2010. Watch it here: https://youtu.be/vJG698U2Mvo
The critical point they made is that the mind is naturally drawn to whatever it is that our attention is directed towards. We are often easily fooled in this way and Safety is a master of illusion. When the noise is loud enough we inherently ignore important details, when we are prompted to take something simply at face value. The good thing is that our unconscious is probably very aware of what the semiotics are doing to us and I have no doubt that this sign would cause those glancing at it to have some uneasy feelings, even if they cant rationally explain them.

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