The New View, Safety II, Resilience Engineering, Human Organizational Performance (HOP), Safety Differently, High Reliability Organizations (HRO)
The term "New View" is used on this website to generally describe approaches to health and safety that have emerged during the past 25 years as alternatives to traditional approaches to workplace health and safety. The New View includes Safety II, Resilience Engineering, Human Organizational Performance (HOP), and High Reliability Organizations (HRO). Each of these approaches contains features unique from others. On the other hand, there are many common concepts shared by all. Broad generalizations of this nature are dangerous because there are many flavors of each approach, and implementations vary dramatically – many of which would be unrecognizable to the leaders of the approach.
In any case, we believe that emphasizing the broad alignment of major concepts rather than less important differences will be most helpful to organizations. Listed below are foundational concepts common to New View Approaches. The reference page contains specific documents, books and resources for each approach to facilitate a deeper understanding of its concepts, methods and implementation.
Foundational Concepts
1) Health and safety is a property of the system.
Traditionally health and safety have been defined as the absence of injuries and illnesses. The workplace is considered safe if there are very few injuries or illnesses. Yet, when someone asks, "how are we doing?" the OSHA recordable and lost time case rate charts are trotted out. Company leaders and safety and health professionals have been led to believe that these rates measure safety and health performance. Most know there is a problem. Safety Solutions has surveyed thousands of corporate leaders and health and safety professionals on the question, "The OSHA incident rate is an accurate measure of safety and health performance ."Every single group survey has responded negatively to the statement. There is widespread recognition that relying primarily on the OSHA incident rate as a measure of performance is a mistake. The problem is that organizations want to find more effective measures but are unsure what to do.
In addition, a review of the worst catastrophic incidents in the United States during the last 15 years indicates that most had low OSHA incident rates, and many were considered award-winning. Better performance evaluation processes and metrics are needed that reflect our new understanding of health and safety as an emergent system property.
OSHA Rate ≠ Health and Safety Performance
If safety and health isn’t the absence of injuries and illnesses then what is it?
Safety and health is an emergent property of the system. Safety or the lack thereof emerges from the complex interaction of many factors such as leadership, technology, processes, work practices, culture, and system deficiencies and strengths.
Understanding the concept of system emergent properties is very important. Think about the human body. Examples of our body system's emergent properties include our ability to see, think, walk, write, etc. No individual part of our bodies can do these things. Only our whole bodies can do them. In the same way, safety and health is an emergent property of the workplace system. Safety is not found in an individual part of the system, a person, device, procedure, or training program. Safety and health is a product of the interaction of parts of the system – the management system, people, work methods, hazard controls, procedures, supervision, tools, equipment, and many other factors, including culture, production pressure, resource constraints, goal conflicts, and system deficiencies and weaknesses. System performance is never the sum of the parts of the system but rather the product of their interactions. Unfortunately, most efforts to improve workplace health and safety are directed at improving the parts or functions taken separately and insolation of other related and interdependent parts. Efforts would be more effective if directed at the interaction or interdependencies of the system parts, for example, information flow, communication, integration, etc., that influence how the parts fit or work together.
The Russell Ackoff video below is a compelling presentation on why most improvement processes fail. This message has a clear application to current health and safety improvement efforts. This video is a game changer! Enjoy.
The new view of safety is the application of systems thinking to workplace safety and health. An understanding of systems and the concept of emergent system properties is foundational.
The Influence of Context
Traditionally there has been a tendency to not only focus on system parts in isolation of their interaction with other parts but also to identify, evaluate and 'control' conditions and human performance (behaviors) in isolation. Such an approach is fundamentally anti-systemic and leads to continued failure, conflict, blame and waste of resources. The efforts are well-intentioned, recommended by dedicated personnel and carried out by committed individuals.
What is meant by context?
All human work performance/activity is carried out in imperfect sometimes severely degraded systems. Frequently the work is performed generally using the proper tools and methods and with adequate resources. However, in every steel mill, auto plant, hospital, power plant, transportation company and construction site workers adapt and make the system work without the proper tools, equipment, procedures, staffing and supervision. They are overwhelmingly successful. Unfortunately, at times things go wrong and someone is hurt, gets sick, equipment is damaged, etc.
"All human behavior is influenced by the context in which it occurs…. Many recent accidents that have been blamed on operator error could more accurately be labeled as resulting from flaws in the environment in which they operate.” Nancy Leveson, MIT, Engineering a Safer World, page 47
“…safety is not found in a single person, device or department of an organization. Instead, safety is created and sometimes broken in systems, not individuals. The issue is finding systemic vulnerabilities, not flawed individuals.” Behind Human Error, Sidney Dekker, professor at Griffith University in Australia, David Woods at Ohio State
Core New View Concepts - The Application of Systems Thinking to Health and Safety
Safety Redefined. Safety is the presence of organizational and operational controls and defenses rather than the absence of injuries and illnesses.
Organizational Influences. All conditions and human behavior are influenced by organizational factors including but not limited to conflicting goals, resources such as staffing, availability of time and equipment and training, culture, organizational structures, metrics, reward systems, etc.
System As a Cause or Hazard - Context Matters. Organizational factors result from both internal and external factors such as competition, financial pressures, the legal system, market factors, leadership risk tolerance, organizational structure, etc.
Leadership Reduces Safety Margins. Intense competition, as well as organizational factors like those mentioned above, result in a continual change of processes and how work is performed. Process variation, changes, including innovations, may reduce the margins of safety and, as such, must be understood and managed.
Dynamic Nature of Hazards and Risk. The workplace, including hazards, risks, and organizational hazards, is dynamic and not static and requires an agile non-blame learning culture and monitoring processes that depend on leadership and worker participation.
Impact of Beliefs and Mental Models. Organizational Structures and System structures influence organizational beliefs and mental models. And beliefs and mental models affect system structures. As such, organizational beliefs and mental models and in particular, those of leadership must be made visible and assessed to determine if they are valid and aligned with organizational goals.