Learning from success? Doing safety differently

Safety regulators frequently find themselves in an environment dominated by compliance and control, where rules and bureaucratic requirements multiply, people’s behaviour is regarded as the problem, and success is measured by the (apparent) absence of incidents.

And yet the empirical evidence is that improvements in safety have plateaued and duty holders have become expert at gaming the performance measures, so the inexorable growth in rules and paperwork is not having the desired effect, and may indeed be actively counter-productive.

Safety differently is a set of ideas which have become a movement. Instead of aiming for as few things as possible to go wrong, it tries to ensure that as many things as possible go right. It works on empowering and learning from people rather than controlling them, and building successful safety strategies on the principles of autonomy, mastery and purpose.

Please join the founder of Safety Differently, Professor Sidney Dekker, and a leading work health and safety practitioner as they guide us through this groundbreaking approach and draw out the lessons for all regulators.

• Facilitator: Dr Maggie Hardy (presentation slides)
• Speaker 1: Professor Sidney Dekker
• Speaker 2: Martyn Campbell

For further reading:

1. From Safety I to Safety II, a White Paper by Hollnagel, Wears & Braithwaite (2015)