Why Safety Rules Must Be and Be Perceived as Reasonable

Many industrial safety-sensitive sites operate on a reasonably authoritative chain of command structure to organize and execute work. However, due to the often large geographic footprint of industrial areas, usually in a dynamic, open environment exposed to changing factors, companies must rely heavily on autonomous rule compliance, which means that individuals follow the rules when no one directly supervises them. Thus, safety performance depends on the cultural norms and buy-in of teams working to keep each other safe. Individual compliance and peer enforcement rely on hearts and minds approach or buy-in into the rule.