To Prevent Serious Injuries, we need to widen our Information Funnel
“Information is the Currency of Safety” – a quote by Ivan Pupulidy, PhD that has always resonated with me, and to me this is one of the reasons why we need to evolve our safety culture. To be more specific, I want to use this opportunity to make the connection between Human and Organizational Performance (HOP) and preventing Serious Injuries and Fatalities (SIF).
If we want to prevent SIF events, we need to maximize our learning. And what do we need to learn? Yes – information, but accurate information, no wishful thinking. We need to know what’s really happening in our operations, otherwise we don’t know about the real error traps, and we end up fixing nothing, or even worse, the wrong things. Clive Lloyd really summarized it well: “You can’t fix a secret!”.
When I was talking about this last month, exploring how to improve investigations, I used the analogy of a funnel, an ‘Information Funnel’.
As I see it, the wider this funnel is,
If our information funnel is too narrow, we will miss important information that will ultimately lead to worse outcomes (less learning, more error traps, unfair judgements, poor learning culture).
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To the critics of HOP who love to create a dichotomy between traditional safety and the ‘new’ ideas: Of course we also need good investigators, effective training, risk management, etc. (traditional safety if you will), but that’s not my point. If we want to MAXIMIZE our LEARNING, we need to WIDEN our INFORMATION FUNNEL And here is where HOP comes into play.
If we integrate HOP into our culture and safety management system, it will help us create a culture that…
so that we can ultimately widen our information funnel and prevent SIF.
What are your thoughts? How wide (or narrow) is your information funnel? What can we do to widen it?
Global Vice President Health & Safety at L'Oréal. TEDx speaker. Co-founder OneWISH. RoSPA Guardian Angel award 2018 and Corporate Influencer of the Year 2021.
1 周Frank Pflueger I like this. We definitely need a balanced approach. When I look at what many international companies do I see a mix of SIF, management systems, BBS, HOP, PDCA, psychological safety….etc. Non of these are ??new new?? most have origins many years ago. Human factors for example, I came across at least 25 years ago. It’s important to assess where a company/site is in its journey and for the EHS leader to determine what do I need to do next to move the needle. My experience tells me that if a site tries to do something it is not culturally ready for it will fail and time and money wasted. Non of these initiatives are exclusive. Talk soon #bethehummingbird
System Safety Engineering and Management of Complex Systems; Risk Management Advisor...Complex System Risks
1 周Very wide funnel? https://www.dhirubhai.net/posts/mike-allocco-emeritus-fellow-isss-71076812_let-us-understand-the-integrated-risks-maybe-activity-7286815872734707712-NWTe?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop&rcm=ACoAAAKak_wBDvXGNOjBXfq6hacUVvv0WBLqWZk
Governance Safety Lead @ Repsol | Hazard management, Safety Leap, ESG
3 周Great perspective! It’s crucial that investigations go beyond identifying direvt failure of hazards' controls and delve into the deeper factors that contribute to human errors, uncovering the organizational and system weaknesses.
Superintendent at Andersen Construction | Founder of EmpowerBuild | Empowering Leadership in the Trades
3 周Frank Pflueger, it seems to always start and end with trust, which communication is the foundation of. Communication is creating a physically and psychologically safe environment for our workers, so they come from a place of trust.
Safety culture and leadership adviser, public speaker, baseball coach, intentional boy dad, and conservationist
3 周I like your inputs, Frank. In my simple brain, I believe a big part of the problem is simply not taking the time to dig deep enough on events (before or after they happen). With a more focused effort on WHICH events to dig deeply on, I think we can use our valuable time more wisely. The things you list under missed information are well thought out. Understaffed and time pressure being the ones that often stand out preventing us from digging. This is one of the reasons I love our strategy. Thanks for continuing to lead us in this space, my friend!