In this first extract from the webinar, Professor Erik Hollnagel explains the concept and the origin of myths about industrial safety. In other words, the widely-shared beliefs and assumptions that affect our approach to safety.
Safety relates to the need to understand what has happened when something goes wrong. First, because we want to be able to do something to prevent the incident or accident from happening again. Then, because we want to feel safe we try to find out what caused it in order to eliminate it. And it is this need that leads to our theories, assumptions and myths about safety.
In the following extracts from the webinar, Professor Erik Hollnagel addresses five of the most widespread myths about safety:
- The causality credo: “all accidents have causes which can be found and treated”.
- The accident pyramid: “different types of adverse outcomes occur in characteristic ratios”.
- Human error: “human error is the largest single contributor to accidents and incidents”.
- Rational accident analysis: “accident investigation is a logical and rational identification of causes”.
- Standards and procedures guarantee success: “systems would be safe if only people would comply with procedures in the standards that they’re given”.
About the expert
Erik Hollnagel is a worldwide expert in human performance in safety-critical systems. He is a Professor at the University of Southern Denmark and Chief Consultant at the Centre for Quality Improvement, Region of Southern Denmark.
Prof. Hollnagel has published over 20 books and several hundreds of scientific articles. For more information: http://www.erikhollnagel.com/
Attached document
Questions & answers with Erik Hollnagel