FieldSafe: Building Inclusive and Safe Field Teams

Managing risk in the field includes the physical, objective risks of the environment, but also the interpersonal challenges carried by working with small teams in isolated places. Scientists working in remote field conditions are even more vulnerable to impacts from extreme working environments or harassment because they are far from their personal support systems and typically cannot escape their working and living situation. Here we present FieldSafe, a three-part workshop series designed for training every member of research teams operating in field environments, from seasoned academics to undergraduates. The workshop provides tools to address a growing awareness of the challenges of working far from support networks and resources traditionally found at home. Taking a deliberate approach to managing behaviors and hazards in the field can keep every individual safe and the team performing well.

Originally funded by NSF as a Risk Management Workshop for Field Scientists, an in-person workshop series designed to improve field experiences for research teams (Hill et al., 2021), FieldSafe features a new collaborative effort between CIRES' Education and Outreach and its Earth Science and Observation Center at the University of Colorado Boulder and the AdvanceGeo Partnership. Specifically, FieldSafe features a facilitated virtual workshop designed to mitigate environmental and interpersonal risks in remote field environments. In addition to traditional field risk management topics, FieldSafe's content focuses on tools to help create supportive field team environments including Codes of Conduct, open communication through debriefing, decision-making for supportive group culture, and positive privilege. Several strategies are introduced for managing interpersonal incidents or microaggressions to keep the team intact and functioning, including AdvanceGeo's popular bystander intervention training.

The training format is a series of short, self-paced recorded content videos and reinforcement activities, grouped into three modules and two live facilitated Zoom discussions. In total, the FieldSafe workshop requires a 5-6 hour commitment over one week.

FieldSafe was first offered in summer 2022. Here we present an overview of the program and results from post-interview surveys and assessments.