When Work Policy Meets Behavioral Reality
2024
Elevate + National Renewable Energy Lab + Institute of Design at Illinois Tech
Reframed extreme heat as a behavioral infrastructure challenge, equipping Elevate and partners with simulation tools that surface policy blind spots. Designed narrative foresight games that enable cross-sector actors to stress-test assumptions, confront coordination failures, and build institutional capacity for anticipatory governance.
71%
Affected Global Workforce
23M
#1
Urgency U.S. Weather Killer
Extreme heat events are becoming more frequent, prolonged, and severe, threatening global worker safety at unprecedented scale.¹ In 2024, over 2.41 billion workers (71% of the global workforce) faced excessive heat exposure, contributing to 23 million annual occupational injuries and 19,000 deaths worldwide.² Chicago exemplifies this crisis: the city broke a 137-year temperature record in June 2024, with South Side neighborhoods averaging 12°F hotter due to urban heat island effects.³,⁴
Current worker guidelines prove fundamentally inadequate for these intensifying conditions. Analysis of occupational heat stress incidents reveals 100% of fatal cases and 73% of non-fatal cases exceeded recommended limits, exposing critical gaps between policy design and workplace reality.⁵
Economic stakes compound the urgency. Heat stress could eliminate 2.2% of global working hours by 2030 (equivalent to 80 million full-time jobs) while 26.2 million people already live with chronic kidney disease from workplace heat exposure.²
U.S. regulations still assume rational compliance, ignoring how workers make decisions under pressure, fatigue, and unclear authority structures.⁶,⁷
References:
¹DM Gubernot, GB Anderson, and KL Hunting, "The epidemiology of occupational heat exposure in the United States," Environmental Health Perspectives, 2014.
²"Working on a warmer planet: The impact of heat stress on labour productivity and decent work," International Labour Organization, 2019.
³"Chicago breaks 137-year-old temperature record as heat wave continues," Chicago Tribune, June 18, 2024.
⁴"Defusing disasters: Group maps out extreme heat resilience strategies for cities," Northwestern University Buffett Institute, 2024.
⁵AW Tustin, GE Lamson, and BL Jacklitsch, "Evaluation of occupational exposure limits for heat stress in outdoor workers," MMWR Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, 2018.
⁶"Temperatures climb, advocates say people working in hot warehouses need protection," WTTW News, June 20, 2024.
⁷"Rules for managing heat stress at work," Occupational Health & Safety, February 11, 2025.
Surface —
Extreme Heat Exposes Gaps in Workplace Risk Governance
Analysis reveals a disconnect between policy design and real-world behavior under heat stress. Occupational health policies assume rational compliance, yet worker decisions are shaped by fatigue, economic insecurity, and unclear authority.
Behavioral Trade-offs Under Heat Stress Field mapping revealed that workers under thermal strain experience present bias, prioritizing short-term income over long-term safety. In construction, logistics, and delivery, safety behaviors diverge sharply depending on economic pressure and perceived risk norms.
Unequal Protections, Uneven Risk Stakeholder typology mapping highlighted stark contrasts in autonomy, institutional support, and exposure:
Emergency workers operate under mandatory presence with institutional protection and intense risk.
Formal-sector workers hold partial autonomy with moderate protections but remain vulnerable.
Gig workers make high-risk choices with minimal protection under economic duress.
[Data viz: Worker Typology Map – Autonomy vs. Support vs. Risk Exposure]
Policy Logic Misses Lived Complexity Policy frameworks assume uniform environments. Workers operate across overlapping jurisdictions and fragmented mandates. Institutional stakeholders vary in capacity and accountability, creating implementation friction.
This gap between institutional logic and lived experience creates systematic policy failure, where apparent individual choices reflect structural design problems that behavioral simulation can address.
[Data viz: Misalignment Matrix – Institutional Mandate vs. Behavioral Reality]
Shift —
Toward Policy Designed for Behavioral Infrastructure
Occupational heat policies fall short because they assume rational decision-making under irrational conditions. Workers face impossible trade-offs between short-term income and long-term health because current frameworks focus on individual compliance rather than system conditions.
Integrated Perspective Enables More Resilient Policy Design
Effective heat adaptation requires a blended approach. Policy frameworks bring enforcement but often miss behavioral nuance. Economic perspectives surface patterns like present bias and risk trade-offs, but lack tools for contextualization. Design methods translate complexity into tangible actions and institutional learning. When combined, these approaches compensate for each other's blind spots and support more adaptive, human-centered governance.
[Data viz: Policy–Economic–Design Integration Model]
Behavioral Context Matters More Than Assumptions
Heat stress decisions reflect social expectations, unclear authority, and cognitive overload rather than poor planning. Power asymmetries shape access to shade, breaks, and protective equipment. Those with institutional authority can act. Those without bear the risk.
[Data viz: Risk–Support–Autonomy Matrix by Worker Type]
Simulated Scenarios Make Invisible Barriers Visible
These behavioral realities demand intervention methods that make system failures tangible. Scenario design grounded in behavioral economics revealed how intrinsic motivators (challenge, self-direction) and extrinsic ones (rewards, mandates) must work together. Role-based policy simulation tested how assumptions break down when roles conflict, mandates blur, and actors must improvise under real constraints.
[Data viz: Behavioral Design Choice Framework]
Heat Policy Requires Layered Stakeholder Engagement
Policy cannot succeed with a single message or one-size-fits-all enforcement. Each stakeholder plays a different role. Primary: policy makers and regulators. Secondary: advocacy and community organizations tasked with implementation. Tertiary: planners, emergency responders, and public health actors who translate rules into lived experience. Present bias must be anticipated. Loss aversion should be used to activate precaution. Behaviorally-informed heat policy adapts to how decisions are actually made under strain, time pressure, and uncertainty.
Sustain —
From Simulation to System Shift
Game as Policy Infrastructure Narrative-driven role-playing creates safe spaces for stakeholders to explore tensions between personal risk and collective responsibility that policy documents alone cannot surface. Trade-offs become visceral rather than theoretical, and hidden priorities and behavioral biases are surfaced through contextual, compounded scenarios.
Mechanics for Adaptive Dialogue The game unfolds in asymmetric conversation rounds among 2 to 6 players over 90–120 minutes. Participants adopt roles and take action under pressure. Scenarios escalate heat risk and simulate how fragmented mandates, social pressure, and limited resources shape behavior. A visual economic interface reveals resource allocation trade-offs, while action cards uncover behavioral patterns and role-based friction points. [Data viz: Heat Policy Simulation Architecture – Roles, Resources, Reactions]
Sustainable Conversation Design Structured dialogue and collective reflection turn simulation into learning. Participants gain language for coordination, develop shared understanding of behavioral versus structural problems, and begin to recognize institutional blind spots. This becomes the groundwork for institutional memory where insights extend beyond the session.
System Integration Through Anticipatory Governance This institutional memory enables anticipatory governance as dialogue prepares stakeholders for coordination under pressure. Game structure provides replicable methodology adaptable across occupational policy domains. Replayability ensures continued relevance with new configurations and outcomes. Conversation patterns become durable frameworks for ongoing institutional learning. Policy participants gain capacity to recognize when apparent compliance failures reflect design problems requiring systemic rather than individual intervention.
Sight Note —
Role immersion reveals decision pressures surveys miss, making abstract trade-offs viscerally understandable for policy makers
Interactive narrative enables experimental mindset, creating growth opportunities to explore system dynamics safely
Structured debriefs transform game experiences into institutional knowledge, creating lasting change beyond individual participant insights