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Why don't people listen?

When things go wrong, you sometimes need to warn people. Even in an emergency, though, people often don't listen.

Many a risk has escalated to crisis-level because people don't respond immediately, or as you might expect, to warning signals.

Studies of crises show that people initially ignore warning signals. People tend to only respond when a warning is confirmed in some way.

People seek confirmation of a warning signal in various ways:

• through their other senses (They don't evacuate when the fire alarm first rings; they wait until they also smell smoke or see flames.)
• by the actions of others (They check to see whether anyone else is running for the fire escape or whether key people are still talking on the telephone.)
• other synergistic signals (They see fire engines or news helicopters begin to arrive outside.)

This need for confirmation of a warning can present a range of problems to a company. Employees, supervisors and management may all ignore or compensate for a non-normal signal, rather than responding immediately, especially if this response is reinforced in any way by the on-site culture.

The 1979 movie The China Syndrome, was premised on technicians in a nuclear power plant acting on the assumption that a valve was stuck rather than giving an accurate reading.

Workers at Esso's Longford plant explained later that they didn't respond to warning signals before the explosion which killed two and injured other workers, and shut down the whole state of Victoria's gas supply, because warnings were commonly false.

Warnings should always be taken seriously. Systems to track and learn from near misses or the incidents which don't escalate to crisis level are a vital part of crisis preparedness.

Key questions

How do you and your employees respond to non-normal signals?

Do you tolerate false alarms?

Do you investigate false alarms?

Have you established an appropriate culture which quickly recognises and responds to danger signals?

Do your risk management systems account for known human behaviours in responding to warnings?

© Kerrie Mullins-Gunst
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