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Dr Christopher Davis, Thought Leadership Manager at IOSH
The biannual publication of the World Risk Poll has become an event marked firmly in my calendar. By tracking both global perception of worry and experience of harm, the report gives us a fleeting but invaluable snapshot of humans’ experience of the world.
Having read this fourth edition, I – like the authors – am encouraged to see the lowest reported experience of workplace harm since the Poll began. A decrease of 3% since 2021 is not insignificant. Perhaps this reflects the steady progress of global efforts to make work and the world safer for all.
Nevertheless, the Poll raises as many questions. Consider these. Why do people in high income countries who work long weekly hours worry significantly more about harm than those who work only slightly less? Why are people who repeatedly experience weather-related hazards actually less worried than those who experience them less often? And why globally are so few people worried about poor air quality when so many of us are exposed to it?
A comment or two on risk perception might be helpful. I write here on behalf of the world’s largest professional body for occupational safety and health practitioners. Our members operate across more than 130 countries as in-house experts or as independent consultants. They are experienced risk professionals who occupy the space where hazards, risk perceptions and actual workplace harm meet.
The conclusions people reach about risk, and things people worry about, are influenced by a complex mix of personal experiences, knowledge and awareness, socio-economic circumstances, and trust in systems that catch people if they fall.
This sort of data is therefore highly interpretable. Here are two examples at the workplace level that safety and health professionals are familiar with. An annual increase in near miss reporting in an organisation is received warmly. Why? Because reporting serves as a proxy measure for workers’ engagement with safety and health. In contrast, another organisation records zero incidents over a five-year period and is deeply concerned. Why? Because it likely suggests workers are disengaged, do not feel inclined to report, or, worse still, do not feel able to. In sum, numbers are less important than the conversations and the actions they lead to.
Risk sensitivity and risk habituation stand out to me in this edition of the Poll. Some workers are attuned to potential harms all around them while others’ tolerance and worry is normalised, perhaps blunted by the constancy and the frequency of the hazards they face.
The worry gap reported in the Poll is also noteworthy. In simple terms, far greater numbers of people worry about harm than experience it first-hand. Unsurprisingly, this gap is more pronounced in lower income countries where, not only is harm experienced more commonly, but the lack of comprehensive protection systems results in graver threats to life and livelihood.
Yet even where those systems do exist, worry about harm still greatly outstrips the experience of it. In high income countries, 7% of people experienced harm at work during the reporting period but over a third are worried about it, a gap of 28 percentage points. In broad terms, this tells us that, for a considerable number, a statistically lower likelihood of experiencing harm does not necessarily make people feel safer. A sense persists that work threatens to take more than it gives.
When graver and more serious workplace harm diminishes and where safety nets exist, people’s expectations about work change. Subtler forms of harm enter the consciousness. Quiet hazards, the report calls them. Those individuals who feel broadly safe from the most pointed workplace hazards – dangerous equipment, harmful substances, perilous conditions – rightfully begin to ask deeper questions about the effect of employment on their mental health, their work-life balance, or their future prospects. All workers deserve to ask these.
Notwithstanding the downward trend reported this year, levels of workplace harm remain unacceptably high. If 16% of the global workforce have experienced harm in the last year, it is natural that many more are worried about it.
Regardless of their stake, policymakers, researchers, practitioners, and others should align their responses to the Poll around these two simple truths. Worry about harm will only decrease if actual harm is reduced and if systems are in place to support workers where it occurs. And the way we communicate workplace risk is vital in addressing the worry gap.
Worrying too little or too much about workplace harm can become a risk factor itself. Good risk communication helps build awareness, understanding, and competence among the global workforce. Well-informed workers are safer – and less worried – workers.
For now, the downward trend in workplace harm reported in this year’s Poll should be seen positively. But it should also strengthen our resolve to maintain progress before the publication of the next iteration.
In this blog, Giulia Maistrello, Senior Analyst at RAND Europe introduces the findings from two new reports. These reports underpin the Global Safety Evidence Centre’s new evidence programme on safe work, exploring both the evidence needs of safety practitioners and the evidence currently available to support them.
Professor Milena Nikolova from the University of Groningen is using World Risk Poll data to analyse how changing technologies affect safety in the workplace across different industries and countries, informing more targeted safety interventions.
The Global Network of Civil Society Organisations for Disaster Reduction (GNDR) will use World Risk Poll data to help identify those most endangered by severe weather and aim to improve their access to early warnings.
