Safe As Podcast

Many organisations rely on their root cause analyses (RCA) to help learn about incidents, and, ideally, prevent incident reoccurrences.

So the logic goes. But does the published evidence support RCA approaches as effective means for preventing incident reoccurrences?

Today's paper is Martin-Delgado, J., Martínez-García, A., Aranaz, J. M., Valencia-Martín, J. L., & Mira, J. J. (2020). How much of root cause analysis tr...

We've all heard about or been part of them - leader walkarounds.

Are walkarounds backed by solid evidence - do they build break down silos, enhance trust, and foster psychological safety, or more symbolic peacocking activities to be *seen* to care, rather than *actually* caring?

Today's article is Foster, M., & Mazur, L. (2023). Impact of leadership walkarounds on operational, cultural and clinical outcomes: a sys...

Conventional wisdom suggests investigating and circulating knowledge of near misses. These 'free lessons', so it goes, are supposed to help us learn without the need for injury or damage.

But can near misses also lead to a desensitisation of risk over time, focusing on the achieved success, rather than the near loss?

Today's paper is from Dillon, R. L., & Tinsley, C. H. (2016). Near-miss events, risk messages,...

How do you consider the role of people within your barrier or critical control system - threat or adaptable strength?

What are some fallacies of human performance, like being unreliable bad apples, and how best to incorporate the strengths of people, while limiting performance variability?

Today's paper is from McLeod, R. W. (2017). Human factors in barrier management: Hard truths and challenges. Process Safety and Environmental Prot...

Are our use of reported injury measures, like TRIFR or LTIFR, 'good enough' representations, or beset with foundational statistical flaws?

Today's report is from Hallowell et al., 2020, titled 'The Statistical Invalidity of TRIR as a Measure of Safety Performance'. From the CSRA.

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Are our safety myths--like most accidents being the result of human error--holding back genuine improvement within safety?

Can myths like these actually hamper learning, and increase operational risk?

Today's article is from Besnard, D., & Hollnagel, E. (2014). I want to believe: some myths about the management of industrial safety. Cognition, Technology & Work, 16, 13-23.

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We design, implement and certify our safety systems with best intentions. We hope these systems help us to identify and address workplace hazards.

However, is it possible that certified management systems can instead mask particular complex sociotechnical issues, simplifying psychosocial matters into neat, auditable matters, devoid of their depth and nuance?

Can auditing transform functional systems into easily auditable, but less f...

Is Zero Harm a laudable approach or a misdirection--an illusion--associated with higher fatality rates?

This episode dives into the paper from: Sherratt, F., & Dainty, A. R. (2017). UK construction safety: a zero paradox?. Policy and practice in health and safety, 15(2), 108-116.

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More research at SafetyInsights.Org

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Are our investigations blinded to the functioning and effectiveness of risk controls?

Are our current approaches, and mental models about how safety events occur, defined less by what they unpack and more by what they leave in the dark?

This study unpacks these questions, and evaluates how accident investigators consider, or not, the functioning of risk controls within the context of investigations.

Ref: Dodshon, P., &...

Are audits effective checks and verifications of our risk control systems?

Are they diving deep into the functionality and effectiveness of systems and practices, and evaluating actual daily, hazardous work?

Or, are they mostly rustling paperwork at the expense of real operational hazards?

Ref: Hutchinson, B., Dekker, S., & Rae, A. (2024). Audit masquerade: How audits provide comfort rather than treatment for serious safety probl...

Conventional logic suggests that we fix the gaps that we find in investigations. But is this the case?

Is the investigation process more a socially constructed game of sociopolitical whack-a-mole, finding and fixing the things that are easily solved or understandable, or tolerable to the organisation?

Lundberg, J., Rollenhagen, C., & Hollnagel, E. (2010). What you find is not always what you fix—How other aspects than causes...

Is there a connection between fatal and non-fatal accidents, or is it a fallacy to focus on the minor potential events with the hope of managing the major events?

Today's study explores these relationships based on 23k reported serious accidents in the Netherlands.

Ref: Bellamy, L. J. (2015). Exploring the relationship between major hazard, fatal and non-fatal accidents through outcomes and causes. Safety Science, 71, 93-103.

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How well can Learning Teams function against more traditional Root Cause Analysis techniques?

What things do they focus on, what fixes result from the learning activities? Does one focus more on blame and individuals rather than systems factors?

Today we explore a paper by Robbins et al., 2021, comparing Learning Teams vs RCAs.

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Are the contributing and causal factors similar between Severe Incidents & Fatalities (SIFs) and non-fatal incidents?

Will eliminating the minor potential, low-energy hazards help prevent the major potential hazards?

Today we explore the following paper: Bayona, A., Hallowell, M. R., & Bhandari, S. (2024). TheThings That Hurt People Are Not the Same as the Things That Kill People: Key Differences in the Proximal Causes of Lo...

Do you trust your accident statistics? Are they accurate reflections of reality, or dangerously misleading?

In this episode, we explore the following study which evaluates the extent of accident underreporting:

Probst, T. M., & Graso, M. (2013). Pressure to produce = pressure to reduce accident reporting?. Accident Analysis & Prevention, 59, 580-587.

Link: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/256084901_Pressure_to_pro...