Unsafety First!
Carsten Busch
Safety Mythologist and Historian. The "Indiana Jones of Safety". Grumpy Old Safety Professional.
Many ‘inspirational’ slogans are found within safety. "All accidents are preventable!", "If you think safety is expensive, try an accident!", "Better safe than sorry!". Not all of them make sense when you think about it. Take one of the oldest and most famous: "Safety First!". We use it all the time, without thinking about what we are actually saying or what it means. "Well, I'm going to go up on the roof and nail that thing down." "Sure. But remember: Safety First!"
If we go back in time, to the beginning of safety as a profession at the turn of the 19th to the 20th century, we see that "Safety First" was a thing back then. The slogan had probably been used before, but in the United States there was an actual "Safety First Movement" that tried to promote occupational safety. Europe turned out to be far ahead when it came to the prevention of accidents at work. In Europe, there was also more focus on regulation. In the U.S., it had to come from elsewhere: from socially engaged citizens (call them "activists" if you will), insurance companies, and progressive employers who understood the importance of safety. One of these was U.S. Steel, one of the first organizations to have an actual safety department and structural cooperation between employer and employees. It was also U.S. Steel that first systematically used the slogan "Safety First!" and then passed that slogan on to others.
In this early period, "Safety First" was mainly a slogan intended to indicate that safety was a topic that deserved priority. Safety had to be considered when setting up workplaces. Before you started work, you had to think about the safe execution of work, and you had to involve employees in this. However, early safety thinkers such as Lewis DeBlois and H.W. Heinrich were already critical of the literal meaning of the phrase. Safety was important, but it couldn't come first. After all, it had to be in balance with, for example, production.
The other day, there was a message on Linkedin about NASA. They were doing a great job with safety. Safety was prioritized in everything, and thanks to that "Safety First" attitude, NASA had done a great job. I remarked, somewhat critically, that if NASA really did put safety first, they should at least stop working on rockets and sending people into space. After all, it doesn't get much dangerous than that.
Of course, according to some of my colleagues, I should not have said that. "Safety First" shouldn't be taken that literally. It was a symbolic phrase, meant to indicate that safety should be a priority. Or it should signal that safety is a precondition that you must have taken care of before you start working. There was someone who tried to convince me that "First" was not about a priority, but about order in time. First you start thinking about dangers and risks, then you take measures, and only then you start working on what you want to do. And yes, that may mean that safety is a priority, but it is mainly about the order. You always started with safety. Point.
That got me thinking. It should hopefully be clear that safety is not the first priority. As DeBlois and Heinrich wrote in the 1920s and 1930s, it must be balanced with other objectives. Safety was there to make that possible. But by pretending that safety is the most important thing, it could get in the way of other activities. But would it really be the case that safety should be the first thought? That we should always start with safety? I am convinced that this is also utter nonsense. We NEVER start with safety. We start with an idea of what we want to achieve. Then we think about how we want to do things. We want to sail across the ocean to discover new continents. We want to put people on the moon. We want to fix a thing on the roof. We always start with a thought about things that are dangerous. It's basically: "Unsafety First!".
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We often forget that. We're not in the world to be safe, and the organizations we work for aren't primarily there to be safe. Not even organizations where safety is a very important prerequisite. If safety came first, then we'd better close the gates, all go home, and stay in bed. And then just hope nothing happens there! Safety is important, but it's never absolute. Safety helps us to do those dangerous things we feel like doing in a "safe" way. And that brings me to the words of another early (and unknown) security thinker, Albert Wurtz Whitney, who argued that life was essentially a series of adventures. Safety was not to make things impossible, but to have better adventures. I think that's a very nice thought to end with.
Want more on various safety topics? Feel free to check my books, for example:
Co?rdinator veiligheid
3 个月Great piece, Carsten! However you are right about the start of an idea before safety, in current businesses the idea what to make and do and the production facility is already there. A statement as Tata Steel put on their blast furnaces ‘Safety first, production follows’ is there primarily for all employees who start working there to stimulate and encourage them never to forget that working there without having safety on your mind at first is a very dangerous idea!
Managing Director at Operational Wisdom & Logic
3 个月I think you make to classic errors here: a) mutual exclusion fallacy; b) timing vs priority error; MUTUAL EXCLUSION - By saying “Humans are a risk seeking species. Hence, no safety first...”, you imply mutual exclusion. But risk and opportunity are two sides of the same coin. What people really seek is opportunity KNOWING that there are almost always tradeoffs and possible negative outcomes. They are never mutually exclusive. The pursuit of opportunity is often motivated by the greater safety afforded by the outcome. PRIORITY ERROR - your post implies that it is the ideation of the pursuit of some beneficial task or objective that comes first, chronologically. But that ignores that timing isn’t always equal to priority. We can set out to do numerous tasks in a chronological sequence (having thought about them in different orders) BUT still view their priority (or importance) achronistically. I do it every time I go grocery shopping shopping (must get milk but will bag up vegetables before I get to the freezer section). The ‘first’ in most ‘safety first’ slogans is not one of timing but of priority. Or more importantly, upon scrutiny, evaluation or critical analysis to place an emphasis on safety over other objectives.
Principal Training Specialist | Human Performance and HOP Advocate (Promoter) | Operation and Maintenance Leadership | Chemical Engineer | Operation Readiness Manager |
3 个月Safety should be more like a “value,” not an objective or goal; otherwise, people will compromise or trade-off; again, it should be a value like honesty, teamwork, etc
Principal Training Specialist | Human Performance and HOP Advocate (Promoter) | Operation and Maintenance Leadership | Chemical Engineer | Operation Readiness Manager |
3 个月Interesting quote “if NASA really did put safety first, they should at least stop working on rockets and sending people into space. After all, it doesn't get much dangerous than that.??????