Small in stature, big in presence and quietly spoken, the whole room seemed to lean in to hear what Erik had to say when he took the mic. Given he is basically the Godfather of Safety-II, this isn’t surprising. He’s had decades of experience giving keynote speeches and has developed ETTO, FRAM, RAG, as well as helped launching Resilience Engineering and Resilient Health Care.
Erik took us on a historic journey reviewing safety’s origin before challenging us to think about where we are at today. He went right back to the ancient times where to err was considered human and the best way of dealing with harm was to pray to the Gods.
Key Learning Point 1: Accident Investigations, Captain Hindsight and Divorce
Erik challenged us to think about accidents and how even in highly standardised environments where everything is well maintained and humans are highly trained accidents still happen.
The traditional Safety I mindset is that if you look backwards you can stop bad things happening. This is supported by our standard reporting standards that highlight deficiencies, causes and compliance activities. In Erik’s view, much like you can’t drive a car by only looking in the rear vision mirror we can’t do safety by constantly looking backwards.
Erik’s key question was can you learn about what a good marriage looks like while only looking at divorces? The answer is of course not! And, for the record, John Gottman has completed rigorous studies that can predict with 90% accuracy whether a marriage will succeed. Imagine if we could prove with 90% accuracy that a worksite was safe!
Key Learning Point 2: Reliability and Resilience
If studying accidents is not the answer then what is? It doesn’t matter if you are relying on domino’s, swiss cheese, roots or bow ties, if there are no accidents, there is no feedback from the system and nothing to study. Erik illustrated this idea with the story about a frog swimming in gradually heated water, the frog didn’t even realise that it was being boiled alive.
Instead, Erik encourages us to notice the constant adjustments that are made to keep our workplace’s ‘normal’. We need to investigate what we are creating, avoiding and compensating for, to maintain the status quo. This means gaining an understanding of the constant efficiency/thoroughness trade-offs workers make in a work environment where there are always goal conflicts.
We need to understand what our teams have to learn, manage, respond to and anticipate for ‘business as usual’ to occur. This opens up a discussion on the Resilience Assessment Grid; however, that’s another story entirely and requires more than a blogs’ worth of writing to explain.
The COHSF committee would like to formally thank Erik for taking the time to come and speak to us and would welcome him back anytime.
QUICKFIRE QUESTIONS
1. What has been the highlight of your working career?
Collaborating with others to find solutions
2. What has been the hardest decision that you have had to make during your working career?
No real challenges here, just said yes to opportunities.
3. What was the hardest lesson that you have had to learn?
Listen to what people say and how they say it to find out what they are really saying.
4. If you could go back to your first year in your professional role, what advice would you give to your younger self?
Be prepared for anything!
5. What advice would you give to people starting out in their health and safety career?
Be prepared for anything
6. What is the key message from your presentation?
Safety is not about focusing on death, injuries and accidents. It’s not about trying to ‘avoid’ things It’s about finding out what is going well.
7. What is the one thing you would like the audience to do when they leave the conference?
Think about what is working well in your organisation and how this can be applied elsewhere
8. Best part about NZ
The weather! Denmark is pretty miserable at this time of year
GET IN CONTACT
Website: www.safetysynthesis.com
Email: sensei@safetysynthesis.com
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/erik-hollnagel