Initiative Overload Is a Signal Organizations Can’t Ignore

Why More Safety Initiatives Don't Create More Value

Initiative overload is often a signal that a system is struggling to distinguish what genuinely helps work succeed from what simply adds effort. In the last article, we explored how asking better questions helps make value visible in everyday safety work. 

Now we’d like to tackle initiative overload, another area of concern according to CHOLearning conference feedback.

Table 1: Pain points raised by delegates.

To address this systemic signal, we’ll continue the conversation from the last article and explore how better questions can help address what sits underneath initiative overload.

If better questions help us see value more clearly, the next challenge is how we respond, without adding another programme, framework, or layer of work.

Initiative overload is feedback, not resistance

When organisations discuss initiative overload, common feedback includes:

• People are tired

• Engagement is low

• Things don’t “stick”

• We need better rollout, better communication, and more discipline

But overload rarely comes from too much change.

It comes from effort that doesn’t deliver a visible benefit.

People don’t disengage because work is hard. They disengage when the effort required doesn’t seem to change decisions, reduce friction, or help them succeed in real situations.

From that perspective, initiative overload is an important signal that we can’t ignore.

And when we treat it as feedback, we can ask questions such as:

What should we stop, refocus, or redesign so that effort and benefit are better aligned?

Responding to Initiative Overload Without Adding Another Initiative

What follows isn’t a program or a maturity model. It’s a way of thinking leaders and safety professionals can use immediately, especially when capacity is tight.

STOP | REFOCUS | REDESIGN

This way of thinking doesn’t reduce ambition; it provides clarity and delivers progress.

STOP: When Initiative Overload Comes From Low-Value Work

Stopping work can feel uncomfortable, particularly when activities are intended to make work safer. So it’s worth being clear about what “stop” really means.

STOP does not mean:

• Stop caring

• Stop complying with critical requirements

• Stop learning from everyday work

STOP means stopping practices that:

• Generate data that doesn’t influence decisions or change.

• Exist mainly because they always have

• Disappear the moment work gets busy

• Provide reassurance, but don’t build capability or capacity

A simple test can help:

If this activity stopped tomorrow, would anyone notice, apart from the dashboard?

If the answer is no, that’s an important signal; it’s valuable information you can use to lighten mental and or physical workload.

Stopping low-value work doesn’t lower standards; it makes room for effort that actually helps. It frees capacity and improves buy-in.

REFOCUS: When Initiative Overload Signals Misaligned Effort

Not everything needs to stop.

Much of what contributes to overload exists for good reasons, but its impact is diluted because attention is spread too thinly, or application is misaligned with intention.

REFOCUS is about direction and clarity, purpose and meaning.

This often involves:

• Concentrating effort where risk, complexity, or learning potential is highest

• Supporting local decisions that improve local work, rather than applying everything everywhere. Quality is better than consistency!

• Prioritising help and supporting effort that moves work forward over activity that merely produces data.

When effort is refocused, something interesting happens.

People don’t feel like they’re doing less. They feel like what they’re doing finally counts.

That shift moves us from feeling overloaded to feeling that contributions matter. Buy in follows!

REDESIGN: When Good Intent Needs a Better Shape

Some initiatives struggle not because of poor execution, but because they were designed for control rather than contribution.

REDESIGN is where we recognise that something matters, and that there is untapped potential.

This is the point where we can ask questions such as:

• Does this help people solve problems and think better as work progresses?

• Does organisational support arrive and make a real difference?

• Does it enable upstream coordination that takes risk out of work execution?

• Does it help people adapt safely, and help the organisation learn how to support that adaptation?

Redesign often means we are thinking systemically to empower and enable, not control:

• Moving upstream from checking what is being done to enabling safer work

• Shifting from retrospective assurance – checking back to ensure work was done correctly -  to prospective help – shifting toward forward-looking, proactive support that sets people up for success.

• Designing systems that support success, not just detect failures…

When work is redesigned to help people succeed, overload doesn’t disappear because tasks were removed. It disappears because the work now makes sense, has purpose, meaning, and value, which, from an organisational perspective, adds capacity.

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Why this works (and why it may feel familiar)

If this way of thinking feels familiar, that’s not accidental.

It reflects Human and Organisational Performance (HOP) principles, particularly the idea that performance doesn’t come from rules or programmes alone, but from how values such as trust, respect, and belonging are built into everyday processes (Principle 3).

When systems are designed to help people succeed, rather than simply to check compliance, effort starts to feel worthwhile.  When leaders reinforce valuable and helpful contributions instead of activity for its own sake, performance improves naturally (Principle 4).

STOP, REFOCUS, and REDESIGN aren’t new ideas, they are practical ways of applying these principles to understand how organisational practices and systems can be adapted to improve the safety of the work people are being asked to do.

Connecting Initiative Overload to Learning ROI and Value - with a link in the title back to the first article

In the previous article, we introduced three strategic questions to help surface value.

They also provide a useful lens here:

• If an activity can’t clearly demonstrate value → it may need to STOP

• If it has value but consumes disproportionate effort → it likely needs REFOCUS

• If it has good intent but poor impact → it probably needs REDESIGN

Seen this way, initiative overload is something organisations can respond to deliberately, once they treat it as a signal and ask the right questions.

Learning from the signal

When initiative overload is treated as a learning signal, organizations gain insight into where effort drops away or why engagement is low. The signal is showing us which activities don’t help, and how people adapt to keep work moving safely.

Human and Organisational Performance tells us that harmful events are less likely to occur not due to additional control, but as a result of organisations learning how work actually happens, then adapting systems because work is better understood and better supported.  Treat initiative overload as one of those learning signals.

It tells us where effort drops away under pressure. It shows us which activities don’t help when it matters most. And it reveals where people are already adapting to get the job done safely.

It signals that the initiative may be a distraction in and of itself.

Practical Takeaway: Reducing Initiative Overload Without Reducing Standards

Over and above the questions provided in this article, we mapped the intentions of common safety practices against where value is actually experienced in everyday work.

It is critical to focus on the difference between intent and experience, and where benefit can be strengthened without adding effort.

That mapping is provided as an appendix for reflection and exploration, not judgment.

Closing thought: High Performance Comes From Focusing on What Adds Value

High-performing organisations don’t succeed because they do more. They succeed because they are better at distinguishing what helps from what merely adds activity.

Initiative overload isn't a weakness to be corrected.

It's a signal worth listening to.

And when leaders respond by stopping, refocusing, and redesigning, capability grows, engagement improves, and learning becomes part of everyday work, rather than another item on the list.

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Appendix A: Re-Examining Common Safety Initiatives and Where Value Could Live

Theory into practice: Discovery, not judgment, the opportunity is to expand the experience.

Safety Practice	Intention?	Where Value Could Be Created (Backed by external research)	A Better Question to Reveal That Value
Safety Observations / Reporting	Make risk more visible	Trust & Psychological Safety: Research in high-trust organisations (HBR, Deloitte) shows people speak up early when support reliably follows voice.	“What happens after someone reports? Does help arrive?”
Start-of-Work Briefings / Pre-Task Planning	Create clarity before action	Coordination & Flow: MIT CISR and PwC show that better coordination improves productivity and reduces rework.	“Do these discussions actually remove friction, or do they just describe the work?”
Audits / Inspections	Confirm controls are in place	Operational Learning: HBR and Human Synergistics show that cultures that learn during work adapt faster than those that only check compliance.	“What patterns, constraints, or adaptations are people working with/around that the audit could help with?”
Risk Assessments / JHAs	Document hazards and controls	Decision-Making Under Pressure: Research on High-Reliability Orgs shows judgment under changing conditions drives resilience.	“How do we support, recognise, and help people when conditions change, and they must adapt? AND what does the organisation need to adapt from what we learnt?”
Learning Teams / HOP	Shift from blame to learning	Shared Problem-Solving Capability: Deloitte & PwC show teams that co-create solutions have higher engagement and retention. How do we help the organisation find the problem they want to solve, then connect, collaborate, and create solutions they own?	“What improvements have we made because we listened and acted? Did any of the changes help you?”

Familiar practices can create greater value by comparing Intent vs Experience; the difference matters!

People do not describe beneficial changes as “Initiative overload”; overload means “not worth the effort.”

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Andy Barker works with leaders to increase the influence and impact of their safety efforts by making complex ideas practical, human, and easy to apply. Drawing on practitioner experience across Europe, Africa, and the Middle East, Andy has helped organizations across very different starting points, from low-trust, high-incident environments to already strong safety performers, strengthen collaboration, ownership, and outcomes, with safety contributing directly to business performance.

He is the founder of OrgTree.me and a regular contributor to CHOLearning.

In 2024, Andy was awarded CHOLearning’s first Excellence in Applied Learning for demonstrating how theory becomes impact through real-world application.

Andy’s work focuses on ownership, trust, and the everyday leadership behaviours that turn safety into performance.

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References Sourced by Notebook LM: Strategic Research Reports (Deloitte, PwC, MIT CISR)

1. Deloitte: Poynton, S., Flynn, J., Eaton, K., Cantrell, S., Mallon, D., & Scoble-Williams, N. (et al.) (2024). 2024 Global Human Capital Trends Report. Deloitte Insights.

Key topics cited: Human Performance, Human Sustainability, The Transparency Paradox (Trust/Growth), and Human Capabilities (Curiosity/Resilience).

Cantrell, S., Fisher, J., Stephane, J., Flynn, J., Fields, A., & Van Durme, Y. (2024). When people thrive, business thrives: The case for human sustainability. (Chapter in 2024 Global Human Capital Trends).

Key metrics cited: Trustworthy companies outperform competitors by up to four times in market value; Trust in data management raises the probability of business growth by 50%; Workers in high-trust companies are 50% less likely to leave, 180% more motivated, and 140% more likely to take on extra responsibilities.

Ton, Zeynep & Kalloch, Sarah. (2022). PayPal and the financial wellness initiative. MIT Sloan School of Management. (Referenced in Deloitte’s Human Capital Trends Report).

Key metric cited: PayPal estimated saving US$500,000 annually for every 1% reduction in attrition.

2. PwC (PricewaterhouseCoopers)

Starink, Bastiaan & Velthuijsen, Jan Willem. (2022). The benefits of investing in People.

Key metrics cited: Investing in all eleven employee experience drivers could yield 12.6% of total revenue; targeted investment in key drivers can yield 4.9% of total turnover.

Huang, M., Li, P., Meschke, F., & Guthrie, J.P. (2015). Family firms, employee satisfaction, and corporate performance. Journal of Corporate Finance. Vol 34. pp108–27. (Cited in CIPD’s “People and the creation of value”).

Key metrics cited: A one-point shift in employee satisfaction ratings is associated with a 52% difference in profitability and 8% difference in market valuation.

3. MIT CISR (MIT Sloan Centre for Information Systems Research)

Dery, Kristine & Sebastian, Ina M. (2017). Building Business Value with Employee Experience. MIT CISR Research Briefing, No. XVII-6.

Key finding cited: Companies with great employee experience outperform competitors on innovation, customer satisfaction, and profitability.

II. Academic, OSH, and Organizational Culture Research

4. Human Synergistics International

Source: Sanders, Eric J. & Cooke, Robert A. (date not explicitly stated, but includes 2004 data). Financial Returns From Organizational Culture Improvement: Translating “Soft” Changes into “Hard” Dollars. Human Synergistics White Paper..

 Key metrics cited: Constructive norms are significantly related to earnings/sales ratios (r = .22, p < .05); Longitudinal case study showed a 7 million surplus* at a medical centre following culture change.

5. Harvard Business Review (HBR)

Trust/Learning: Buell, Ryan W. (2019). Operational Transparency. Harvard Business Review, March–April 2019.

Culture/Learning: Buckingham, Marcus & Goodall, Ashley. (2019). The Feedback Fallacy. Harvard Business Review, March–April 2019.

Innovation/Design: Bason, Christian & Austin, Robert D. (2019). The Right Way to Lead Design Thinking. Harvard Business Review, March–April 2019.

6. Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) Research

Ankamah-Lomotey, S. A. (2025). The Impact of OSH on Employee Retention: Examining the Relationship Between OSH and Employee Retention. International Journal of Research in Education, Humanities and Commerce, Volume 06, Issue 05.

Key metric cited: Management commitment to OSH emerged as the strongest predictor of employee retention (β = 0.36, p < 0.01).

7. The Sustainability Institute by ERM

Sanchez, M. and Bhojani, F. (2020). The Role of Health in Building a Culture of Care in Projects During Construction. Online posting. Society of Petroleum Engineers.

Key finding cited: Shell’s review indicated that the health function, acting as a catalyst for a 'Culture of Care,' resulted in outperformance due to positive impacts on engagement, safety records, and productivity

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Disclosure of AI Use: This attestation was developed with the assistance of artificial intelligence tools.

Tool(s) used: NotebookLM (Google Labs), ChatGPT (OpenAI)

Purpose(s): research, editing, SEO

Human review/editing: All content was reviewed and finalized by CHOLearning staff prior to publication