Why people don’t follow the rules: The importance of communication and behavioural psychology

Why people don’t follow the rules?

Lead Consultant, Sarah Prince, talks about our human behavioural response to rules and Leaders’ roles in creating a positive safety culture  

When we are young, we do as we are told simply because we‘re told to at home and at school. It’s a learned response to our environment and our social norms but as we grow and develop our own individual thought processes, we learn that breaking the ‘no running in the corridor at school’ rule doesn’t necessarily end in disaster.  

According to research by Nature.com, the brain has already processed the data on how we are going to respond 10 seconds before we act. We use different parts of the brain for different processes but the vast majority of our decisions are already automated. Our brain has already weighed up the different potential outcomes and made its decision before we act. And so if a person is breaking the rules in a work environment, we have to ask why.  

Are they pushed for time? Is it because of people resourcing? Are they facing other external pressures? Are they wanting to get home early?  

Only by considering all the things that impact their day, and the way our brains think, can we use this information to adapt and apply rules. 

The person who does the job is the expert, so Leaders must try to understand why that person may be breaking a rule. There is probably a good reason.  

You can ask certain questions to try and understand your workers’ decision-making processes:  

• What’s stopping you from achieving or completing this task?  
• What would make it easier for you to do?  
• What makes this job really hard for you? 

When you gain people’s answers, you can break down the reasoning behind their desired and undesired behaviours. Team Leaders are then able to create processes that encourages rule following – also known as ‘Nudge Theory’. 

Each person has a level of risk they find acceptable. As we push a boundary, and get away with it, this becomes our new normal. And because we got away with it last time, we’re likely to do it again… and again. 

But particularly in high-risk work environments, risk homeostasis can be life threatening.  

It’s rare for a week to go by without news of injuries or deaths in the health and safety trade press. 

There can’t be any more talk of ‘health and safety being our highest priority’. Instead, health and safety must be a core value within an organisation. Leaders must be willing to stand up and say certain behaviours aren’t acceptable and remind workers of the company values. 

Priorities move up or down a list, depending on the tasks coming in. For example, if meeting a finance deadline suddenly becomes urgent, safety will fall down the ‘priority’ list. But a value remains important regardless of competing priorities. It’s an internal behaviour underpinning all aspects of an organisation and thus, as a value, behaving unsafely should feel uncomfortable as you’re undermining the things that you and your company hold dear. 

Ultimately, if you don’t put the time and effort into understanding what is happening, you will never be able to change the situation and people will continue to break rules.   

Leadership, communications and employee engagement are the three top areas to consider as to why people break the rules, why things go wrong, and why people are injured at work, but a Culture Assessment is the best way to understand where your culture is currently. Only when you understand this, can you begin to take steps to change your workplace culture. 

Sarah Prince has an MSc in the Psychology of Behaviour Change in Health and Safety and more than 20 years’ experience in developing and leading safety culture programmes.
 

This is a version of an article that featured in the May 2023 issue of Safety Management, the magazine of the British Safety Council.