With the arrival of the coronavirus pandemic, our "new normal" means that tasks that used to be routine may now have more steps and be more complicated. We're all spending time and energy making decisions that we didn’t have to think about a couple of months ago. For instance, what used to be an ordinary trip to the grocery store now takes planning, hand sanitizer, a mask, and patience. As people have taken on additional stressors, you yourself might have a person onboard suffering from decision fatigue, not forgetting yourself.
Decision fatigue leads to poor choices, accidents, and unplanned injuries at the work site. So, how can decision fatigue be avoided?
What is Decision Fatigue?
Decision fatigue describes why people are more likely to make poor choices when they are at the end of a long session of decision-making. As a supervisor, it’s up to you to make it easier for your people to make the right safety decision every time.
Making Safety Behaviors into Habits by Keeping Things Simple
When you create and implement safety rules for the job site, you're getting your people to form safety habits that don’t require analytic thinking. On a busy job site, people have to make split-second choices all the time—and each decision requires mental effort. So, by enforcing simple safety rules that are easy and painless to follow, you free up mental energy for your people to make good choices when they have to think carefully.
Maintaining Excellence through Your Rules
Upon entering the job site, workers have to put on a cloth mask, wash their hands, and then put on the rest of their required PPE. When all workers wear cloth masks all the time, they don't have to decide when and where to put them on and take them off. It's your job site. You make the rules. Your people don't get to decide when to wear safety glasses, and it won't be long before masks are just another kind of required PPE.
Make more complicated decisions easier by supporting your people and their mental health. You can do so through the following:
Encouraging Collaboration! People are more likely to make better safety decisions when they can talk about it with their co-workers. But collaboration may take more effort when your crew is busy and practicing physical distancing, and wearing masks that make communication more difficult. Think of innovative ways that can get your people to connect, especially when they're making important decisions.
Encouraging Questions! Be prepared to do some on-the-spot safety training. Call us if you need a hand. We can offer S.A.F.E. cards and COVID-19 safety meetings.
Encouraging Breaks! Get your people to rest their bodies and minds. You may need to build more breaks into the schedule to give them time to go outside, breathe some fresh air, and reconnect.
