Listening that saves lives: a new tool to decode safety communication in high-risk settings

In high-risk industries like aviation, healthcare, and chemical manufacturing, the ability to speak up about safety concerns, known as safety voice, is essential. But what happens after someone raises a concern? Until now, the response, safety listening, has typically been poorly understood and rarely measured.

To address this, Alyssa Pandolfo, Tom Reader and Alex Gillespie developed EARS — the Ecological Assessment of Responses to Speaking-up tool — which allows researchers to study how people respond to safety concerns in real conversations, making it easier to understand what influences those responses and how interventions can improve outcomes.

Developing EARS

The researchers analysed 45 flightdeck transcripts from aviation incidents spanning 1962 to 2023. Using a combination of deductive, inductive, and abductive content analysis, they identified patterns in how safety concerns were responded to. This led to the creation of an initial taxonomy of safety listening behaviours, including both engaged responses (like implementing or questioning) and non-engaged ones (like dismissing or token listening). The tool achieved substantial reliability through iterative refinement and testing, using an additional 150 transcripts. The final taxonomy identifies six safety listening behaviours: action (implementing, declining), sensemaking (questioning, elaborating), and non-engagement (dismissing, token listening) and two additional voice acts (escalating, amplifying).

Impact

The EARS tool can help organisations and researchers reliably assess how people respond to safety concerns in real conversations, offering insights into how communication influences accidents. It supports training, incident analysis, and policy development, and can measure changes in listening behaviour before and after interventions. Though developed in aviation, EARS can be applied across industries and adapted for surveys or AI-based analysis, making it a scalable solution for improving safety culture in high-risk environments.

Learn more about the development of the typology:

Citations

Pandolfo, A. M., Reader, T. W., & Gillespie, A. (2025). The Ecological Assessment of Responses to Speaking-up tool—Development and reliability testing of a method for coding safety listening behavior in naturalistic conversations. Frontiers in Public Health, 13, Article 1652250. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2025.1652250

Pandolfo, A. M., Reader, T. W., & Gillespie, A. (2025). Safety listening in high‐risk situations: A qualitative analysis of responses to safety voice in aviation. Risk Analysis, 45(00), 1–24. https://doi.org/10.1111/risa.70106