Quantity and quality: Increasing safety norms through after action reviews

Workplace safety is a concern for both scholars and practitioners alike because accidents and injuries can result in time away from work and lost organizational resources. This study focuses on how one type of post-incident discussion can be effectively used to promote positive safety norms. It adds to the growing body of research on after action review meetings, one type of post-incident discussion intervention commonly used in high reliability organizations to increase future workplace safety behaviors. This study also extends the sensemaking and high reliability literatures by examining a three-way interaction between perceived frequency of after action review meetings, ambiguity reduction and psychological safety. Survey data were obtained from 330 firefighters. Results from the three-way interaction showed that safety norms were highest when perceived after action review frequency, ambiguity reduction and psychological safety were simultaneously high, and safety norms were lowest when perceived after...