As humans, we take in and process an enormous amount of information from our surrounding environment.  How much so?  Some experts suggest up to 11 million bits of stimuli each second.  Job tasks that are repeated often are recognized as familiar and associated behaviors become automated.  The process is naturally occurring and helps us navigate through what would otherwise be a paralyzing amount of information.  Our response to most situations is a reflection of how we process information and seldom reflects a willful disregard to one’s safety or well-being.

The human brain is wired to maximize efficiency of effort.  Incoming information is processed in two fundamentally different ways.  One occurs below our threshold of awareness and the other, through conscious deliberation.  Most complacent behaviors are the result of subconscious biases, rooted in past experiences.  Outcomes involving like or similar circumstances weigh heavily in the decision-making process.  Favorable experiences are repeated; unfavorable ones are not.  Our commitment at any point in time primarily reflects what’s internalized and understood as being in our best interest – in the moment.  This can, and often does, reveal our irrational nature.  When incidents involving injury occur, it’s most often the unintended consequence of a well-intended action.

Of the 11 million binary bits of information we take in each second, less than 10 are elevated to conscious awareness.  It’s not a matter of deliberate choice – it’s a function of capacity.  Situations deemed novel, new, different, or recognized as important command our undivided attention, which is an extremely limited resource.  It isn’t that employees are distracted, it’s just that they’re focused on other matters internalized as more important based on past experience.  Because we’re not capable of consciously multi-tasking, the brain pushes that which is familiar to the subconscious for handling in the background, freeing up our ability to focus on that which is not.

Complacency is often described as operating on “auto-pilot”.  A term synonymous with habits, about 40% of our daily behaviors are automatically occurring and develop over time where recurring patterns exist.  What time you get up, the route you take to work, and when you eat are all examples of patterns formed over long periods of time.  It has nothing to do with an employee’s work ethic and is in no way a personality trait limited to a subset of your workforce.

The key to overcoming complacency involves redirecting and using to your advantage the very framework responsible for this human phenomenon.  While the majority of our decisions and subsequent actions occur subconsciously, we have the ability to veto this process.  It requires conscious effort and deliberation to do so.  The role of leaders is to help employees see at-risk behaviors from another perspective.  It requires changing how they feel about them, more so than trying to change what they might think about them.  In addition, emphasis should be placed on creating good habits to replace bad ones.  Develop employees and put in place processes intended to automate safe decisions and precautionary behaviors. In communications, narrow your focus to the critical few hazards and risks you want employees to have front of mind.  Less is often more.  Finally, place more emphasis on the benefits of doing things right, and less on the consequences of doing them wrong.  As humans, we’re far more responsive to positively framed communications.  Every effort should be made to work with and not against this neuro-trait we each share.