In this 10 part series of Reducing Risk Tolerance we will explore each of the ten factors that influence risk rolerance and provide more details about each.  When taken together, this series should provide a more comprehensive review of the factors that influence risk tolerance so action can be taken to reduce risk toerlance and keep people safer. The factors that influence personal risk tolerance are:

• Overestimating one’s own capability and experience (increases risk tolerance)
• Familiarity with the task i.e. complacency (increases risk tolerance)
• Seriousness of the potential safety outcome (decreases risk tolerance)
• Voluntary actions and sense of being in control (increases risk tolerance)
• Personal experience with an outcome (decreases risk tolerance)
• Cost or implications of non-compliance (decreases risk tolerance)
• Confidence in the equipment (increases risk tolerance)
• Confidence in PPE and rescue (increases risk tolerance)
• Potential profit / gain from the action (increases risk tolerance)
• Role models accepting risk (increases risk tolerance)

This episode discuss how overestimating one’s own capability and experience tends to increase risk tolerance when undertaking a job.  

Experience can be a poor teacher when it comes to understanding risk.  As a task is completed without any incident it reinforces in your mind that you are doing that job well and correctly.  This is regardless if the procedure is followed or if the job is done incorrectly; the fact that nothing bad happened reinforces the expectation in the mind that knowledge is gained and the work was done properly.  As we know, this isn't always the case.  Poor procedure following doesn't always result in an immediate incident as mutiple conditions must be aligned in just the right way for an event to actually happen.  But more importantly as the task gets completed mutiple more times with all the same mistakes, the “wrong” way continues to be reinforced as an appropriate way and you can become blind to the proper way.

Additionally, over time, our accumulation of experience and experiences causes us to believe that we have more capability and expertise than we really do.  Especially when it comes to transfering that ‘experience” and knowledg to a taks that we may have not done before.  We may think that with our accumulated knowledge and expereince that “we’ve got this” but in reality we overestimate our capability and experince an the applicability of that experience to the new task at hand.  In some cases peole misread their 20 years of experience for what is in reality 1 year of experience repeated over 20 years.  These are all dangerous assumptions and part of why these behviours tend to increase risk tolerance.

Overestimating one’s capability is another interesting challenge in reducing risk tolerance as we all think we have more capability than we actually do and sometimes our away from work activities influence our at work behaviours.  For example, someone who spends time int he gym lifting weights for exercise and training purposes looks at a 75lb object at work and thinks that because they lift heavier objects in the gym all the time, that they can easily move this 75lb object.  What is different, however, are the conditions, size, shape, or incongruent (i.e.lopsided) nature of the object making it much more difficult to move or manage, let alone the work place procedures that may dictate that objects over a certian weight (e.g. 50lbs) must not be moved by a single person.  This overestimating capability comes to bear in many situations including driving, dealing with adverse weather conditions (i.e. cold and heat), activities requiring strength, and knowledge about subjects and activities.  

Generally, be cautious about how you estimate your own capabilities and experience and how it applies to the task at hand as we tend to overestimate the value of both which increases our risk tolerance.  And as supervisors, we must be on the look out for this tendency as well.