Incorporating Identity Safety into the Laboratory Safety Culture

Abstract

Chemistry practitioners, particularly in educational settings, often associate building strong safety cultures with compliance or regulatory requirements around laboratory glass-ware, equipment, flammable and incompatible materials, signage, container labels, and safety data sheets. Other fields of science also emphasize biohazardous materials, animal handling, human subject, and ergonomics. However, little attention in the literature has gone toward describing the interpersonal interactions and behaviors affecting the physical and emotional safety and wellbeing of laboratory trainees and personnel from marginalized backgrounds. This work unifies known approaches of building strong safety cultures and principles for preventing identity cues that threaten safety within a laboratory environment. Specifically, this work uses the four principles of chemical safety RAMP model as a conceptual framework for integrating identity safety within the laboratory safety culture.

Graphical Abstract

INTRODUCTION

The American Chemical Society (ACS) recently updated its core values to include a statement on diversity, equity, inclusion, and respect. It states, “[w]e embrace and promote diversity in all its forms, not only to create a more inclusive environment for the practice of chemistry, but also to provide fair and just outcomes for all to achieve their full potential. Inclusion of and respect for people of all backgrounds, perspectives, experiences, and ideas will lead to superior solutions to world challenges and advances chemistry as a global, multidisciplinary science.”¹ The intent of this statement is to lead the chemistry enterprise into appropriate approaches for making all levels of chemistry and chemical engineering education more equitable and inclusive environments, particularly for people of diverse backgrounds and identities. Incorporating divergent experiences broadens the collective perspective of threats and opportunities (cognitive diversity) that drives innovation and better problem solving.^2–5 This aspirational call is particularly important as these environments often lack a critical mass of diverse people, therefore increasing the likelihood of blind spots toward safety-threatening events. These blind spots can persist due to an organization’s collective thinking that systematically distorts information and inhibits communication despite carefully defined procedures, checkpoints, and official protocols. Such organizations are susceptible to a culture of behavioral rigidity void of true dialogue with people deemed outside of that societal identity norm.⁶ Informed changes to the laboratory environment can be a targeted approach towards addressing this disparity and rigidity.

Laboratory environments include those used for training and research and development to advance the chemistry enterprise at large. The regulations that guide them are different, but many of the experiences remain very similar. During my time as Chair of the ACS Committee on Minority Affairs and member of the ACS Diversity, Inclusion, and Respect Advisory Board, I have become aware of many of these unequal, discriminatory, and biased experiences that affect people from nonmajority groups. Many of these stories often mirror my own as I traversed educational pursuits in various chemistry and chemical engineering departments and throughout my professional pursuits in academia. From those experiences, my fellow committee members and I have tried to provide guidance to ACS governance as well as to our external organizational partners as they strive to improve their active demonstrations of commitment to building diverse and inclusive environments. One of these requests for a framework to systemically change the environment came from the ACS Committee for Professional Training (CPT), which added a diversity section to the guidelines for ACS Approval of Bachelor’s Programs. However, when CPT discussed this addition with department chairs, it exposed an urgent need for guidelines or a framework that organizations can use to “cultivate a culture that embraces diversity in [their] department and at [their] institution”.⁷ This concern echoes throughout the chemistry enterprise and STEM as a whole, as practitioners aim to transform their environmental policies and practices.

This work documents approaches from various known models for building strong safety cultures in laboratory environments to incorporate interpersonal and behavioral strategies for diversity, inclusion, respect, and equity. It then introduces the breadth and suggested interventions of this literature as a transformative and sustained conceptual framework that can be easily adopted into any laboratory environment.

THE RAMP MODEL AS A CONCEPTUAL SAFETY FRAMEWORK

The Committee on Chemical Safety (CCS) has taken the lead in authoring several publications that shine a light on approaches for creating safer laboratory environments, emphasizing public education and discussion about creating an effective safety culture in laboratories.^8–10 Specifically, CCS has described the safety culture of an organization as the “actions, attitudes, and behaviors of its members concerning safety”.⁹ Its publications suggest the use of the Recognize, Assess, Minimize, and Prepare (RAMP) model to shape the safety culture of the laboratory environment.

The first step of RAMP is to recognize the hazards as anything related to the materials, equipment, and experiments that may be a source of potential harm or damage to a person’s health.¹¹ The second step of this model includes assessing the risks of the hazards by determining the probability of occurrence and severity of the harm or damage from the hazard.¹² The dimensions considered in this step include studying the route of exposure and understanding the possible results of exposure. This analysis then leads to a thoughtful exploration of ways to minimize the potential risk of the hazard, the third step, which includes identifying methods and safe practices that reduce the probability of the risk occurring and determining the type of controls to prevent the risk.¹³ The final step is to prepare for emergencies from uncontrolled hazards by incorporating procedures for all personnel to understand their roles and responsibilities in responding to the risk.¹⁴

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health has described a hierarchy of controls to minimize risk by using basic categories based on attainability and effectiveness.¹⁵ The most attainable levels but least effective are administrative controls and personal protective equipment programs. The next level includes engineering controls, requiring strategic planning to remove the hazard risk before it can occur. Its initial implementation cost can be slightly higher than for the previous level but is independent of the personnel’s interaction. The highest level in the hierarchy includes elimination and substitution of the hazard. It is difficult to implement, often requiring changes to existing structures and procedures.

This work uses the RAMP Model and Hierarchy of Control language to demonstrate how to incorporate identity safety principles into a laboratory environment to prevent interpersonal interactions and behaviors that affect the physical and emotional safety and wellbeing of diverse laboratory personnel.

RECOGNIZING IDENTITY THREAT AS A SAFETY HAZARD

In exploring events that can threaten people based on their identities, this work defines societal identities and describes events associated with the marginalizing of nonmajority identities.

Societal Identities.

Societal identities are self-determined and externally applied characteristics that categorize individuals in a society. These categories are used to differentiate people based on similarities to or differences from a group.¹⁶ They are linked to stereotypes perceived by other groups, which often leads to tribalism or “self-enhancement” of one group’s characteristics being more acceptable than others in that society. We are all made up of an assortment of identities whose intersection gives space for investigating individualized and interconnected aspects, such as ethnicity, race, socioeconomic class, gender, gender expression, sexual orientation, ability, citizenship, and native language.^17–19 Each identity axis has its own aspect of privilege, discrimination, bias, advantage, and disadvantage. An example of this concept is that regardless of the educational background, training, experience, and title within the chemistry-related organizations that lend to a level of privilege, Black Women are multiply burdened by the stereotypes of being both an ethnic minority and female gendered person, with each aspect having their own negative impact on intelligence, work ethic, preparation, financial, and physical perceptions.^20,21 These burdens are complicated by the additive effects of these marginalized identities, leading to stereotypes that further disadvantage them in both educational and work environments.^22–25 All of the individualized intersections of identity must be considered to understand the potential risks, inequalities, and stigma that a person could experience in a laboratory setting as well as to define the mechanisms within that organization where and when the use of privileged identities can give rise to roles that minimize risks.^26–28

ASSESS THE RISK

In general, laboratory hazard risks are directly proportional to the probability of occurrence and severity-of-the-consequence value. There are many resources for determining and rating risks for chemistry laboratories on the American Chemical Society website.²⁹ This work highlights the factors to consider when determining the risk rating. To assess the risks associated with various identities in a laboratory, one must assess the culture of the environment before determining the probability that an identity-based threat may occur. A 2-fold assessment of severity of consequence is necessary: (1) identify the organizational values and policies, and potentially governing laws, that apply to those scenarios; and (2) determine the hazard’s impact on the ability of an individual to feel safe in the environment. The organizational values and policies, as well as the applicable governing laws, are all specific to the individual laboratory environments. Therefore, we suggest seeking your institution’s support units for appropriate operating parameters.

Social Identity Cues and Threats.

Steele et al. (2002) describe social identity cues as being tied to the perception of a given social identity and directly affecting a person’s ability to trust both the environment and its people.^30,31 We must consider risks from several sources, including from other people and the visual cues within that environment, as well as the policies that govern that area. Some events that can threaten a person based on their identity include isolation, bias, discrimination, harassment, and assaults. Diverse individuals experiencing these cues question their fit for their role and feel higher concerns about their safety than their nondiverse counterparts. The most dominant social group often overlooks these cues, therefore discounting the valid threat. As a result, people with different identities can experience the same cue in psychologically distinct ways due to that society’s identity-specific sociocultural and historical legacies.^32–34 It may be easy to categorize identity safety as purely a form of psychological safety, as it includes the perception of interpersonal risk in that setting and enables groups of people to learn and perform at higher levels;³⁵ however, this view disregards threatening cues, including physically aggressive behaviors, macroaggressions, and systemic policies preventing the promotion and success of historically marginalized groups in an environment or discipline. Much of the broader work in understanding methods for fostering psychologically safe working and learning environments may serve as a primer for individuals beginning to implement identity safety within the RAMP model, but that literature is beyond the scope of this work.

The person(s) responsible for assessing the risk associated with this hazard must have input from better versed and trained resources in the diversity, equity, inclusion, and respect space. These people have been trained to view an environment from an equity perspective, which may influence the ability of people to learn, feel included, or perform.³⁶ Furthermore, applications of critical race theory in these scenarios have shown that higher concentrations of similar but diverse identities in a setting can often remove the perception of stereotypes, judgments, or restrictions for the individual, as they place a value on diversity and inclusion in that space. O’Hara (2020) lists other applications of critical race theory in this scenario, including acknowledging the convergence of interests from all parties desiring to achieve solutions, focusing on asset (instead of deficit) building in marginalized people, deconstructing the simple binary association of people into either black or white identities in policies and spaces, and reworking policies and procedures that have lent to systemic favoring toward the majority societal group.^37–42

Possible Results of Risk Exposure.

Exposure to identity threats can lead to several outcomes, including increased concerns about belonging, fit, and acceptance;^30,43,44 decreased trust;^45,46 increased anxiety;^47–49 impaired executive functioning;^50–52 disparities in job and career satisfaction and career aspirations;^53–56 lower job performance and fewer promotions from supervisors; and increased turnover and absenteeism.^55,57–62 Diverse persons entering spaces that lack diversity start by asking questions about connecting with others, being valued, and being seen as more than the stereotypes of their identity.^36,43,44 Sustained exposure to these threats has been linked to increased self-reliance, acting as less of a team player, overworking beyond exhaustion, increased stress levels, and inability to sleep. In a laboratory setting, these symptoms would lead to depression, burnout, increased sick days, decreased productivity, inability to abide by laboratory protocols, increased hazardous activity, and physically unsafe behaviors with the materials they handle.^63–68 Ultimately, these can lead to an increased turnover and, worse, injuries. Much of the literature and common practice in this space points toward mitigating the effect of these threats by investing in training with objectives such as instilling coping strategies and improving resiliency or empowering the targets of the threat. The literature also suggests that continued exposure to the threats eventually leads to not only psychological but physical ailments. In short, while the risks are often behavioral in nature, the results of this exposure are both physical and economical. Therefore, nonmarginalized people in the laboratory must share in the ownership of minimizing the identity-based risks.

MINIMIZE THE RISK

The results of exposure to identity threats within the laboratory environment can be minimized by building and instilling a supportive environment.⁶⁹ This is particularly important when learning and training occur, as previous reports have shown that the psychological safety of team members is related to the team’s emphasis on a shared learning goal and greater levels of team learning.⁷⁰ Harvey et al. (2019) report that the relationship between emphasizing the shared goal of learning and the actual learning provides a vehicle for developing psychological safety.⁷⁰ This insight suggests that the dynamic environment of laboratories is an important point of focus for introducing identity-safety measures that mirror those we establish after other safety events and near-misses.⁷¹

To fully embrace DIRE principles applied to identity safety, we must identify effective methods and safe practices described in the literature toward minimizing identity threat and maximizing identity safety. Here, we present a review of the literature and provide context for application within the framework of the hierarchy of safety controls in laboratory environment (Figure 1).

Figure 1.

Hierarchy of identity safety controls. Applying to the general hierarchy of safety controls various aspects of minimizing the risk of identity-threat cues from the laboratory environment by using behavioral and organizational strategies developed to enhance identity-safe environments.

Administrative Controls.

Administrative controls are generally instituted with a top-down approach using the organization’s infrastructure to generate and provide training. This is particularly important as the organization typically maintains an institutional knowledge resource of the most current (both internal and external) language, legislation, and policies that apply in the diversity, inclusion, respect, and equity (DIRE) spaces.^{45,46,72–75} These trainings communicate the organization’s DIRE beliefs and values, as well as the consequences for policy violations. These trainings also clarify the federal and municipal laws and statutes that govern the organization and the external repercussions violating them. All laboratory personnel are responsible for attending the training and applying its content.

The literature suggests that organizations using factors such as empowerment and recognition increase a person’s motivation to accomplish the organizational goal.⁷⁶ This is particularly important, as McGregor’s Theory X suggests that people are self-protective, shying away from responsibility, especially when there is a lack of motivation or when their own physical and safety needs are not met.⁷⁷ Dobre (2013) describes empowerment as giving “people responsibility and authority to act as if they are in control of their destinies” and instilling an organizational norm of decision makers recognizing the employee’s quality and results of work.⁷⁸ This type of intentional involvement and empowerment of laboratory members is key in making them less resistant to incorporating identity safety into the laboratory culture. Additionally, Theory Y suggests that when people are properly motivated, they will be self-directed and highly motivated to achieve the organizational goals.⁷⁷ Once they understand the importance of creating identity-safe environments and the relative reward mechanisms, laboratory members should have a correlative shift in interpersonal behavior and group dynamics.⁷⁹ Chiang and Hsieh (2012) report that organizations having psychological empowerment and positive changes in organizational citizenship behavior positively influenced the performance of employees, an impact that most laboratories would enjoy.⁸⁰ This foundation sustains approaches and assumptions about the organizational DIRE culture for all laboratory members in their work conduct.⁸¹

Proper motivation of laboratory members toward more identity-safe practices requires leaders to understand that their leadership is essential in motivating employees.⁸² The laboratory leader is responsible for reiterating organizational beliefs and values and for incorporating them into environmental norms, such as censuring the use of identity-specific stereotypes and targeting prejudicial opinions and biased decisions.^83–88 The leader of a research or teaching laboratory builds the foundation for the laboratory culture. In a research laboratory, the principal investigator should consider implementing requirements for yearly training updates, obtaining signage from administrative units as continuous reminders of the organizational values, participating in laboratory-supported programs focused on training of a diverse workforce, and setting clear repercussions for violations. In an educational laboratory, the instructor carries a heavier burden for building and maintaining the identity-safe environment. Dorothy Steele suggests that the instructor can attain identity safety by reinforcing to students that their identities are an asset rather than a barrier to success, acknowledging the diversity of student identities, and designing challenging opportunities where the application of a student’s totality of experiences is welcomed, supported, and valued.^89–91 In this approach, the instructor should seek an institution’s teaching resources that provide more opportunities for incorporating student-centered teaching approaches, including motivating autonomy in student learning;^92–96 teaching in cooperative, interactive teams;^97–99 and encouraging diversity of the students’ voices and experiences.^100–102

Engineering Controls.

The next level for minimizing the risk of identity threat is establishing engineering controls that allow the laboratory leader and principals to strategically plan for removing sources of the risk before threats can occur. Achieving laboratory safety control demands more intensive work at the onset than providing administrative controls. The least intensive part of the step is to perform an environment scan, whose objective is to examine décor (i.e., posters, objects, ambiance builders) that may suggest exclusion of certain identities.^30,103 For example, the scan may reveal that posters in the space represent only a traditional Eurocentric narrative, communicating that only an old, white male is successful in that scientific discipline. While much of the laboratory décor may be discipline-specific in nature, personnel may also bring in objects with cultural references. Scanning the space can determine if anything may communicate that other groups are not welcome to freely express their identity or if the laboratory is dominated by a specific culture. The next step is implementing an all-inclusive multiculturalism (AIM) approach,^104,105 which openly recognizes the intersectionality of identities of all the laboratory personnel and emphasizes the importance of diverse perspectives and experiences for the success of the group’s objective. For example, an instructor could give the same amount of praise or credit to students who use cultural and experiential references to solve a problem as those who use normalized STEM resources. Another example with broader implications would be to provide time for laboratory members to share a culturally relevant experience that would contextualize the subject matter or problem. Using this approach embraces both the majority and minority identities as important so that no identity feels excluded. However, the laboratory team should take care not to engender stereotypes, such as one ethnic group being more capable of repairing lab equipment. Finally, leadership should establish objective, structured criteria and evaluation policies for personnel success with systematic, structured, and transparent procedures.^106–112 These criteria provide another level for analyzing whether certain identities may be facing inequalities in the laboratory. Leadership should consider identity stereotypes that may be associated with the various measures.^113–116 A reported example concerns a supervisor’s correlating a laboratory member’s age with specific knowledge, skills, and abilities level and evaluating work performance against this assumption. This practice unfairly penalizes people who start that career pathway later in life.^117,118 Engineering controls for identity threats become a feedback mechanism for determining policy and procedural effectiveness or alert the leadership of the laboratory about whether to employ other safeguarding systems, such as implementing a system of congruent performance evaluations by people having similar intersections of identity.^119,120

Engineering controls must also account for interpersonal interactions that underlie the identity safety culture, including those between laboratory leaders and the personnel they manage.^89–91 For both the educational and research environment, the relationship is built upon trusting, positive interactions that promote an expectation for success. Scientists often see socialization as unnecessary to the laboratory’s objectives. However, to fully attain identity safety through engineering controls, the laboratory leader should intentionally cultivate social skills and social relationships within the laboratory membership. The laboratory safety culture must include an innate caring for each member’s emotional and physical safety. Then, identity safety can become actively instilled as a collaboration between learners and employees, similar to the DOW academic partnership chemical safety culture.^121–123

Elimination.

The highest level of engineering controls is eliminating the hazard or risk of laboratory personnel from experiencing identity threats. This level requires administrative and laboratory leaders to implement the most resources from each of the levels as they address critical mass, access, and support. The most prevalent of the three ideas discussed in the DIRE literature is developing a critical mass. Doing so requires including enough individuals of diverse identities who no longer feel discomfort for being or displaying their identity in the laboratory.¹²⁴ An intentional programmatic and hiring effort is to build a “jigsaw” of collaborative, racially diverse work-groups.^125,126 Additionally, people from diverse identities need to have access to a broad network of role models, mentors, and sponsors, with a particular emphasis on structured interactions with more senior level members of the organizational structure.^127–129 In addition to providing access, this network helps individuals visualize different identities as being capable of success in the organization, defines success more broadly based on the organizational values, and helps them to feel valued by their organization. Educators should also cultivate a challenging curriculum with the regular and authentic use of diverse materials, ideas, and teaching activities. Together, these practices serve to increase the awareness of successful diverse scientific practitioners while increasing the success of diverse people within those environments.⁵⁴

PREPARE FOR EMERGENCIES

The final step of the RAMP model is to prepare for emergencies with a multilevel plan for addressing events during and after their occurrence. The most important part of this plan is clearly identifying to all staff their roles and responsibilities in the response plan.

Roles and Responsibilities.

Since every stakeholder in the laboratory’s success has a role in the laboratory response plan,⁸ every member is responsible for building and maintaining identity safety as part of the laboratory safety culture. Laboratories can adopt the four-prong approach for roles identified by ACS CCS: (1) organizational administration, (2) support unit(s), (3) principal investigator or instructor, and (4) lab worker or trainee.

The organizational administration role in developing the response plan starts in earlier steps of the RAMP model by providing both the training and tools that prepare all of the relevant entities for dealing with the various levels of identity safety. This extends to understanding the organization’s top-down structures and policies that affect the response plan. The administration should also direct hazard analysis, provide weighted value of response, lead the mitigation process, and foster an environment that constantly evaluates the sufficiency of the mitigating controls. The administration also communicates hazardous events to external authorities.

Generally, organizations have units to protect personnel rights based on gender/gender expression, race/ethnicity, citizenship, ability, equal opportunity, DIRE, and other regulatory responsibilities. These units have a specialized knowledge that should be sought when developing the response plan, as their staff often have a role in receiving, investigating, and reporting on complaints.

The Principal Investigator and Instructor are responsible for managing the daily events in the laboratory. Their role is essential in the architecture of the response plan. These lead people are responsible for reaching out to administrative personnel who can provide support and subject-matter expertise on the appropriate response. They should address any risks directed toward or received from visitors to the laboratory. They also should document the activities and behaviors concerning the event. The relationship that these people have with the targeted person during the event is key, as it provides the layer of trust necessary for the initial reporting. If a leader’s behavior is an identity-based hazard, or policies/procedures make the laboratory an incubator for identity threats by other participants in that environment, then the organizational administrators in the unit who oversee the leader must take on this role.

The laboratory workers or trainees are the front line of defense against events, but they can also have complex roles in the hazard. These people can include the cause, target, observer, and bystander of the event. As active participants in a strong safety culture, they are responsible for challenging others in the group who have violated the approved controls. Depending on the organizational policies, there may be mandatory reporting responsibilities that a person must adhere to upon observing or being made aware of an event. The environment has to promote a sense of security for the targets to uphold their responsibility to report the event. Finally, the people who are the cause of the event must be dealt with based on a predetermined weighted value scale. This may also mean that the other persons in that laboratory may be responsible for removing the hazard and resecuring laboratory safety. The responsibility of responding at this personnel level is limited to the administrative training they have received as well as the policies and culture communicated by the leader of that laboratory.

Developing a Response Plan.

Three parts should be included in any identity threat response plan: reporting the complaint, investigating or hazard analysis, and resolution.¹³⁰ The complaint should originate from the target of the event; however, it can also come from observers and trusted leaders in the laboratory. In essence, the plan should include who the complaint should be reported to when an event occurs and what will be expected of them during the investigation. There should be specific reporting routes based on the role of the person who causes the event. The plan should also describe how the reporter will be protected to further the identity safety culture of the lab. There should also be clear repercussions for frivolous or bad faith complaints, such as those filed with the sole intent of harassing or embarrassing someone.¹³¹ Once the complaint is reported, personnel should clearly understand who is conducting the investigation, how complaints are generally investigated including a root cause analysis of the culture surrounding the event, rights of all persons associated with the lab, general timelines for the investigation, and any mechanisms for appealing the resolution. The investigation or hazard analysis should be objective about the harm inflicted on the target. As most leaders in a laboratory are not trained for this level of response, this responsibility is generally given to those in the organization’s support units trained in the identity-specific results of the threat. These units have usually worked with the organization’s administration to predetermine a weighted value scale for resolution of the event. These units are also responsible for communicating the resolution to the leadership and other associated personnel. Additionally, the leaders of the laboratory should consider the literature in this space for appropriate consequences and responses to these hazardous events.^132–136

Several examples for plans or strategies are published and used across various sectors. Sue et al. (2019) describe one strategy for disarming racial microaggressions as setting levels of “micro-interventions” that included unveiling the subvert aggression, disarming the messaging of the aggression, educating the offender, and seeking external interventions using the various reporting mechanisms of support units.¹³⁷ Many institutions have also incorporated graphical or pictorial signage to help communicate their response plans. The Massachusetts College of Art and Design created a Bias Response Flowchart, which contains anonymous and nonanonymous tracks for reporting, investigating, and communicating the resolution of events.¹³⁸ Columbia University has created a response policy and procedure for gender-based events¹³⁹ and a graphic communicated via several forums and suitable for posting within various spaces. The university’s plan includes reporting requirements, interventions, the responsible unit, and the weighted value scale of repercussions.

CONCLUSIONS

Chemistry professionals will be seeking ways to ensure that their research or educational environment embraces the American Chemical Society diversity, equity, inclusion, and respect core value. While many may see this directive as separate from the normal conduct in their laboratories, the long-term success of an organization depends on integrating the safety of individuals from diverse backgrounds into their overall safety culture. Broadening our collective understanding of laboratory safety to include active recognition, assessment, and mitigation of the various threats not only prevents marginalization of identities but also enhances the overall safety, productivity, and competitiveness of the laboratory to better address the global challenges of the 21st century.

ABBREVIATIONS

AIM

all-inclusive multiculturalism

CCS

Committee on Chemical Safety

CPT

ACS Committee for Professional Training

DIRE

diversity inclusion respect and equity

RAMP

recognize assess minimize and prepare