Orlando — Safety is known for its acronyms: HOP, BBS, RCA, SIF, OSHA and so on. That’s Human and Organizational Safety, Behavior-Based Safety, Root Cause Analysis, Serious Injuries and Fatalities, and of course the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. The so-called “New View” of practicing safety is HOP. The “Old View” is BBS, and to an extent OSHA compliance. After all, most large companies with mature safety and health programs have been in compliance for years.
The New View and the Old View were explored by speaker Corrie Pitzer at a Monday afternoon education session at the National Safety Congress & Expo here in Orlando. The principles of the Old View:
- Everyone is accountable
- Human error can be reduced
- Consequences drive behavior
- Consequences for actions matter
- Focus on what goes wrong
- Correct mistakes
- The principles of the New View:
- Blame fixes nothing
- Human error is inevitable
- Context drives behavior
- How you respond matters
- Focus on what goes right
- Learning is vital
Pitzer believes safety pros can and should lean on principles from both views, and adds his own:
- Critical work is unconditional
- Humans are the strongest link (safety should focus on what is positive more than what is negative)
- Safety is the readiness to respond to risk relentlessly
- Focus on dynamic discovery (proactive and continual hazard recognition and risk assessment)
- Learn from far misses (focus beyond what is happening now and what has happened to focus on what can conceivably, even improbably happen in the future)
