When the heat is on: Stress and psychological safety in high-risk work environments
By Lani van der Merwe, Senior Consultant at OIM Consulting
In 2013, I found myself working on a project at a mine, where I was part of a team tasked with cadet assessment in a worker training programme. My job was to perform a series of assessments on the cadets, and based on their results, decide whether or not they should be hired by the mine.
One morning, I started a little earlier as I had a great deal of people to see that day. When I arrived at the mine, I was told I couldn’t enter as the police were on their way. After some asking around, it came to light that members of that mining community had cut a hole in the fence, entered the mine after hours, and burned the offices down of those of us doing the assessment. While my office was found with a petrol bomb inside it, it had luck...