Despite decades of advancements in workplace safety, the number of serious injury fatalities (SIFs) in the U.S. remains alarmingly steady at around 5,000 each year. As health and safety viewpoints and strategies have evolved plenty over the years, it’s clear that creating safer workplaces today can’t be about adding another new framework or more tools.
Rather than a singular focus on behavior-based principles or a check-the-box compliance strategy, companies need a comprehensive understanding of how human and organizational factors contribute to safety to prevent SIFs.
Human and organizational performance (HOP) principles offer a fresh lens through which to view (and reduce) SIFs and provide a deeper understanding of how people interact with workplace systems.
In the same vein, human-centric work strategies prioritize the well-being and perspectives of employees. By blending HOP principles with human-centric work strategies, organizations can create more effective ways to understand SIF potential:
1. Understand human behavior
Acknowledge that workers are influenced by their environment, experiences and organizational culture. Recognizing this allows organizations to design systems that support safe behaviors rather than simply enforcing compliance.
2. Foster psychological safety
Psychosocial risks are direct SIF contributors. Create an environment where employees feel safe to voice concerns, report near misses and discuss potential risks without fear of retribution. Psychological safety is crucial for open dialogue and proactive risk identification.
3. Learn from incidents
Shift the narrative from viewing incidents as failures to seeing them as opportunities for learning. Encourage teams to ask, “What can we learn from this?” to uncover systemic issues that may lead to SIFs.
4. Proactive risk management
Focus on potential risks rather than just past outcomes. By understanding the conditions that could lead to serious incidents, organizations can develop targeted strategies to prevent them.
5. Engage employees in safety practices
Involve workers in safety discussions and decision-making processes. When employees are engaged, they are more likely to take ownership of safety and contribute to a culture of prevention.
The real value of this blended approach lies in encouraging a different way of thinking about safety and risk management. Modernizing your approach will help your organization:
Challenge assumptions: Moving away from the belief that compliance alone ensures safety allows for a deeper understanding of how risks manifest in real-world scenarios.
Encourage innovation: Embracing open communication and new ideas fosters a culture of creativity that can lead to innovative safety practices and technologies.
Improve risk awareness: A focus on the potential for serious incidents, rather than just past outcomes, enables organizations to identify and address hazards proactively.
Reframing SIFs with HOP principles and human-centric work strategies can lead to a greater understanding of the conditions that may contribute to serious incidents and the informed development of mitigating strategies. It also creates an environment committed to learning from every incident.
By prioritizing potential over past outcomes through this proactive, blended approach, you are promoting continuous improvement and actively working to reduce SIFs.
To learn more about how to understand SIF potential using HOP and human-centric strategies, check out our recent webinar: Safety Differently: Understanding SIFs and Their Impact on People.