In April, 2010, BP CEO Tony Hayward reassured shareholders that the company was safer and more efficient than ever. Five days later, the Deepwater Horizon disaster happened. This video unpacks a study that evaluated CEO speeches and how rhetoric and slogans can be disconnected with actual behaviour and resourcing. It explores how relentless cost-cutting and… Continue reading CEO Speeches: Talking our way to disaster (BP & DeepWater Horizon)
Author: Ben Hutchinson
The role of trust in occupational safety
How does trust affect safety levels within organisations? 883 Polish industrial workers were surveyed. Shared under open access licence. PS. Check out my YouTube: https://youtube.com/@safe_as_pod?si=iUaDPJynPemQRZhY Shout a coffee: https://buymeacoffee.com/benhutchinson Extracts: · “employees’ trust in management affects safety outcomes indirectly (full mediation), due to the improvement in their engagement in safety citizenship behaviour (SCB)” · e.g. it works… Continue reading The role of trust in occupational safety
Is your safety data backwards? Do leading indicators become lagging and vice versa?
Does doing more safety activity reduce injuries? Not necessarily, and sometimes the relationship may run in the reverse. A study of a major infrastructure project from @helen Lingard, @matthew hallowell and others found that safety activities usually labelled as ‘leading indicators’ didn’t behave as simple one-way predictors of injuries. Some activities were associated with later… Continue reading Is your safety data backwards? Do leading indicators become lagging and vice versa?
Safety paradoxes and (the limits of) measuring ‘safety’ by its absence (unsafety)
Our efforts in health and safety typically “comprises ‘unsafety’ than about the substantive properties of safety itself”. Or so said James Reason in his 2000 article ‘Safety paradoxes and safety culture’. What he meant is that the militant focus on extrapolation from incidents and investigations provides a narrow slice of system effectiveness when risk protections… Continue reading Safety paradoxes and (the limits of) measuring ‘safety’ by its absence (unsafety)
Barriers, critical controls, safeguards, energy models, bowties – a cornucopia of research
Barrier, safeguard, or control; risk or resilience; active or passive barrier; critical controls, support and verification activities. Resharing this 2024 compendium of research on barriers, critical controls, verifications, indicators, and energy models. What makes for an effective control? How can you measure & monitor effectiveness? You’ll find dozens of articles unpacking these questions and more.… Continue reading Barriers, critical controls, safeguards, energy models, bowties – a cornucopia of research
An auditing / investigation tool to reveal our blind spots to engineering and system flaws (From Professor Michael Quinlan)
Do your audits and investigations force you into uncomfortable territory? Or do they safely maintain your existing risk blindspots? It seems many processes still focus on what happened, and who was involved. Fewer push into harder questions, like engineering flaws, missed warnings, production pressure, or known issues that sat unresolved. Emeritus Professor Michael Quinlan developed… Continue reading An auditing / investigation tool to reveal our blind spots to engineering and system flaws (From Professor Michael Quinlan)
Can BBS & HOP be integrated?
Are BBS & HOP destined for conflict and silos, or can–should–they be integrated? This article from Williams & Roberts argues that they’re complimentary and proposes how we can go about this integration. Shout a coffee: https://buymeacoffee.com/benhutchinson
Resilient health and safety performance on construction sites from a safety-II perspective
“These findings .. emphasizes that resilience stems from dynamic, iterative practices that foster adaptive capacity” How do construction management practices influence resilient health and safety performance? Shared under an open access licence. PS. Check out my YouTube: https://youtube.com/@safe_as_pod?si=iUaDPJynPemQRZhY Extracts: · “Instead of implementing proactive interventions that address planning deficiencies, poor coordination, and organizational decision-making under dynamic… Continue reading Resilient health and safety performance on construction sites from a safety-II perspective
Safe As Interview: Emeritus Professor Michael Quinlan – Ten Pathways To Failure
Are major and fatal incidents a series of unfortunate factors, or due to interacting systemic failures? I sat down with Emeritus Professor Michael Quinlan, discussing his research into major accidents. He found that these disasters were rarely just simple mechanical failures, but linked to recurring pathways, like: a. Cost cutting & production pressureb. Gaps in… Continue reading Safe As Interview: Emeritus Professor Michael Quinlan – Ten Pathways To Failure
Psychosocial risk as a leadership system problem: from compliance anxiety to evidence-based culture design
“Psychological injury claims are rising due to a lack of architecture, not empathy” An interesting ‘integrative conceptual review’ of the traps of current compliance-driven approaches to psychosocial challenges, and a way forward. They argue that the current approach places “reliance on individual leadership traits and bureaucratic compliance” over recognising the emergent/wicked nature of psychosocial risk.… Continue reading Psychosocial risk as a leadership system problem: from compliance anxiety to evidence-based culture design
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