Open HSI menu
Subscribe Login

Home / Articles and Press Releases / Article / Why Minor Accidents DON’T Predict Major Ones

CATEGORIES

  • Latest Issue
  • Above The Neck Protection
  • Chemical Protection
  • Confined Space
  • Construction
  • Emergency Procedures
  • Energy, Oil and Mining Industries
  • Eye Protection
  • Fall Protection
  • Gas Detection
  • Hand Protection
  • Hazardous and Explosive Atmospheres
  • Health and Safety Awareness
  • Hearing Protection
  • Heat and Flame
  • Lighting and ATEX
  • Noise Monitoring
  • Personal Protective Equipment
  • Respiratory Protection
  • Safety Footwear
  • Safety Technology
  • Safety Training
  • Slips, Trips and Falls
  • Wellbeing at Work
  • Working at Height
  • Working Rights

MORE

  • Press Releases
  • Events
  • Videos
  • Webinars
  • Magazines

COMPANY

  • About
  • Advertising
  • Newsletter
  • Contact
Open HSI menu
Subscribe

Home / Articles and Press Releases / Article / Why Minor Accidents DON’T Predict Major Ones

CATEGORIES

  • Latest Issue
  • Above The Neck Protection
  • Chemical Protection
  • Confined Space
  • Construction
  • Emergency Procedures
  • Energy, Oil and Mining Industries
  • Eye Protection
  • Fall Protection
  • Gas Detection
  • Hand Protection
  • Hazardous and Explosive Atmospheres
  • Health and Safety Awareness
  • Hearing Protection
  • Heat and Flame
  • Lighting and ATEX
  • Noise Monitoring
  • Personal Protective Equipment
  • Respiratory Protection
  • Safety Footwear
  • Safety Technology
  • Safety Training
  • Slips, Trips and Falls
  • Wellbeing at Work
  • Working at Height
  • Working Rights

MORE

  • Press Releases
  • Events
  • Videos
  • Webinars
  • Magazines

COMPANY

  • About
  • Advertising
  • Newsletter
  • Contact

CATEGORIES

  • Article
  • Press Release
  • Above The Neck Protection
  • Chemical Protection
  • Confined Space
  • Construction
  • Emergency Procedures
  • Energy, Oil and Mining Industries
  • Eye Protection
  • Fall Protection
  • Gas Detection
  • Hand Protection
  • Hazardous and Explosive Atmospheres
  • Health and Safety Awareness
  • Hearing Protection
  • Heat and Flame
  • Lighting and ATEX
  • Noise Monitoring
  • Personal Protective Equipment
  • Respiratory Protection
  • Safety Footwear
  • Safety Technology
  • Safety Training
  • Slips, Trips and Falls
  • Wellbeing at Work
  • White Papers
  • Working at Height
  • Working Rights

Article

Why Minor Accidents DON’T Predict Major Ones

ehs logo

By EHS Congress

| Read Bio

Published: October 23rd, 2019

Share this article

…(as measured in fatalities and serious injury rates, for instance) despite a vast expansion of safety investment, compliance and paperwork.

The cost of compliance and bureaucratic accountability demands are mind-boggling with every employee working on average 8 weeks (!) per year just to be compliant.

It has also stopped progressing safety.

The Case for Doing Safety Differently

‘Safety differently,’ an approach developed by Sidney Dekker, is about halting or pushing back on the ever-expanding bureaucratization and compliance of work. It sees people not as a problem to control, but as a resource to harness.

Today’s standard model of safety, systems are already safe and need protection from unreliable human beings? Sidney says that’s an illusion.

It’s not true that the only thing we need to do to make systems safer is to provide more procedures, more automation and tighter monitoring of performance. Emails from managers imploring people to stop making errors. Imploring people to follow the rules. Saying ‘if we just ask everybody to try a little harder, we’ll have a safe system’.

“Safety is not the absence of errors and violations”

Sidney says what you need to do is to invert the perspective. Safety is not the absence of errors and violations. We need to see safety as the presence of something. Presence of what?

When you get into the messy details, what you see is under difficult circumstances people can still make things go right because of their adaptive capacity. Resilience is this people’s adaptive capacity. Resilience is the ability to bounce back. To accommodate change and to absorb disruptions without catastrophic failure.

Recent research back this up: the risk of fatalities and life-changing events hide in normal, daily routine practices.

Heinrich: minor accidents predict major ones

The ‘Safety Differently’ movement views accidents like the BP Deepwater Horizon as too much focusing on near misses instead of critical issues, and so finds fault in Heinrich’s idea that minor accidents predict major ones.

Safety should be rather an ethical responsibility for people, assets and communities, instead of a bureaucratic accountability to managers, boards and regulators.

Safety Differently doesn’t just want to stop things from going wrong, but is curious about discovering why things go well and helping organizations enhance the capacities in their teams, people and processes that make it so.

Watch ‘Safety Differently – The Movie’ for an online snippet at http://sidneydekker.com/safety-differently-movie/

According to Sidney, organizations looking to excel at safety must do the following:

  1. never take past success as a guarantee for future safety. The fact that this went right yesterday doesn’t mean it will go right today. Past results are no reason to be confident that adaptive strategies will keep on working.
  2. keep a discussion of risk alive even when everything looks safe. Sources of risk may have suddenly shifted in ways that are very difficult to be recognized.
  3. bring in different and fresh perspectives. Listen to minority viewpoints and take them seriously. Invite doubt. Manage to stay curious and open-minded.

Work as imagined vs Work as done

Erik Hollnagel, approaching from a different perspective – health, points to a key distinction of ‘Work as imagined vs Work as done’ and how Safety-I is out of date and why we need to switch to Safety-II.

Safety efforts usually aim to eliminate or reduce unacceptable risk and harm. According to this definition, called Safety-I, a system is safe if as few things as possible go wrong. A problem with this approach is that safety management is based on evidence from random snapshots of failed system states.

Resilience engineering argues that safety should be viewed differently with emphasis on things that go well. According to this definition, called Safety-II, a system is safe if as much as possible goes well. Safety management and the understanding of safety should be based on a systematic understanding of how performance succeeds, rather than on how it fails.

According to Erik, Work-As-Done focuses on how people adjust their work so that it matches the conditions. Instead of only looking at the few cases where things went wrong, we should be looking at the many instances where things went right and try to understand how that happened.

“We need to stop solving problems in isolation”

We need to stop looking at problems in isolation. We need to stop using separate vocabularies, models, methods, organisational focus and organisational roles for each problem. This is the situation now with safety, quality, and profitability as examples. It is convenient in the short term but detrimental in the long term. We need to stop solving problems in isolation.

What caused a particular accident is not answered by listing things that would have prevented it. Erik founded the ‘Developing the resilience potentials’ idea digging deep into Safety-II, when a system is safe if as much as possible goes well similarly to Sidney’s ‘Safety Differently’ thematic but through different perspectives.

Sidney, founder of the ‘Safety Differently’ movement, world-class expert on human factors & safety and Professor of Psychology at Griffith University in Australia, will be flying to Europe to present at the 2020 EHS Congress next April along with Erik Hollnagel, authoritative voice on human reliability analysis, author of more than 500 publications and Professor at University of Jönköping in Sweden.

Share this article

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

ehs logo

EHS Congress

Visit Website

POPULAR POSTS BY EHS Congress

Safety leadership and safety culture event of the year closing registration with last minute seats

Press Release

Safety Leadership and Safety Culture Event of the Year Closing Registration with Last Minute Seats

Adobestock 139948730 scaled 1 - hsi -

Press Release

EHS Congress 2022 Returns to Berlin this September

Ehs congress

Press Release

EHS Congress Calls for Safety First

Adobestock 230574251 scaled 1 - hsi -

Article

Doing Safety Differently

Adobestock 129229679 1 scaled - hsi -

Article

Why Minor Accidents DON’T Predict Major Ones

Get email updates

Sign up for the HSI newsletter

Keep up-to-date through the power of email with Europe's largest audited safety magazine - delivering the latest news and products to satisfy all your occupational safety needs.
  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

FEATURED ARTICLES

Article

 Thameslink Traffic Management Programme

Press Release

‘Working At Height’ Remains Biggest Danger

Press Release

“Uncertainty and Ignorance” Risks More Asbestos Deaths

Advertisement

SOCIAL MEDIA

HSI on Facebook

https://www.facebook.com/HSIMagazine/

Advertisement

SOCIAL MEDIA

HSI on Twitter

hsimagazine HSI Magazine @hsimagazine ·
15h

👀 Did you spot @ionscience featured on the front cover of our recent issue? It is great to have them featured throughout issue 98, advertising their Tiger XT range!

🗞️ Subscribe today!
https://www.hsimagazine.com/subscribe/#subscription-columns

#hsimagazine #IONScience #gasdetection #VOCgas #magazine #subscribe

Reply on Twitter 1622595979374481408 Retweet on Twitter 1622595979374481408 Like on Twitter 1622595979374481408 Twitter 1622595979374481408

Advertisement

SUBSCRIBE

Stay up to date with our newsletter

    • Keep up-to-date with Europe’s largest audited safety magazine

 

    • Delivering the latest news and products to satisfy all your occupational safety needs

 

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Subscribe

SUBSCRIBE TO HSI MAGAZINE

5 reasons to subscribe to our digital and print package

  • Stay up to date from anywhere in the world, with instant access to the latest issue straight from your phone, tablet or laptop.
  • Trust that you’re getting the best content from our range of internationally accredited authors.
  • Get full access to our archives and see how occupational safety has evolved with us over the years.
  • Enjoy our monthly newsletter curated with up-to-the-minute news and a selection of editor’s top picks.
  • Hot off the press and straight to your door – look forward to your own glossy copy of HSI, delivered five times a year
Subscribe View Subscription levels

STAY SAFE & INFORMED

Subscribe to the best health & safety articles, news, products and regulations

Find out more

Stay up to date with our newsletter

  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

ABOUT

  • About HSI International
  • Advertise
  • Contact Us

YOUR ACCOUNT

Sign In Register Account Subscribe to HSI

RESOURCES

Request Media Pack

CONNECT

ACCREDITATIONS

Copyright Bay Publishing 2023. All Rights reserved.

Designed & Built by:
  • Terms & Conditions
  • Privacy Policy
  • Cookie Policy
We use cookies on our website to give you the most relevant experience by remembering your preferences and repeat visits. By clicking “Accept”, you consent to the use of ALL the cookies.
Cookie settingsACCEPT
Manage consent

Privacy Overview

This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience.
Necessary
Always Enabled
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. These cookies ensure basic functionalities and security features of the website, anonymously.
CookieDurationDescription
cookielawinfo-checbox-analytics11 monthsThis cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Analytics".
cookielawinfo-checbox-functional11 monthsThe cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Functional".
cookielawinfo-checbox-others11 monthsThis cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Other.
cookielawinfo-checkbox-necessary11 monthsThis cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Necessary".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-performance11 monthsThis cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Performance".
viewed_cookie_policy11 monthsThe cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies. It does not store any personal data.
Functional
Functional cookies help to perform certain functionalities like sharing the content of the website on social media platforms, collect feedbacks, and other third-party features.
Performance
Performance cookies are used to understand and analyze the key performance indexes of the website which helps in delivering a better user experience for the visitors.
Analytics
Analytical cookies are used to understand how visitors interact with the website. These cookies help provide information on metrics the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc.
Advertisement
Advertisement cookies are used to provide visitors with relevant ads and marketing campaigns. These cookies track visitors across websites and collect information to provide customized ads.
Others
Other uncategorized cookies are those that are being analyzed and have not been classified into a category as yet.
SAVE & ACCEPT