Scary?

Triggering the need for self-preservation

Every October, some of us fill our homes and workplaces with cobwebs, skeletons and fake blood, but the real scares rarely come from ghosts.

They come from the things we ignore because they don’t look scary at all.

• A missing guard on a machine.
• A blocked fire exit.
• A label missing off a container.
• A “temporary” fix that’s been there since 1987.

None of them are cinematic. None go boo! — until they do.

The psychology of “it won’t happen to me”

Humans are wired for optimism. We underestimate familiar risks because we’ve walked past them a hundred times and nothing’s gone wrong yet.

It’s called normalisation of deviance, a fancy term for “we’ve got away with it before.”
It’s how near misses become the background noise of everyday work.
And it’s why the first step in changing safety culture isn’t another poster or policy, it’s triggering that flicker of self-preservation again.

So, what really scares people?

• It’s not a lecture or a legal clause.
• It’s something that hits close to home.
• When people understand that the risk isn’t abstract, that it’s them, their mate, or their job, the penny drops.

That’s why we design assessments and training to make risk feel real, not remote.
Because if a picture’s worth a thousand words, a relatable story’s worth a lifetime of good habits.

Facing your own workplace ghosts

Every site’s got them.

• The unlabelled drums in the corner.

• The extension leads chained like sausages.

• The equipment no one wants to turn off because “it might not come back on.”

They’re not haunted. Just neglected. And the fix is almost always cheaper than the aftermath.

A final thought before Halloween

Fear gets a bad name in safety. But the right amount of fear, the useful kind, keeps us alert.
It’s not about scaring people into compliance; it’s about reminding them why they care.

So this Halloween, don’t just hang plastic skeletons.
Look for the real ghosts in your workplace, the risks you’ve stopped seeing.

And if you’d like a fresh pair of eyes to help you spot them, give us a bell.
We’ll help you turn fear into foresight.

👻 Scary? Not when you know what you’re dealing with.

Book a consultation or download our free Workplace Self-Preservation Guide.