Erik Hollnagel is Professor at the Institute of Regional Health Research, University of Southern Denmark (DK), Chief Consultant at the Centre for Quality, Region of Southern Denmark, and Professor Emeritus at the Department of Computer Science, University of Linköping (S). He has through his career worked at universities, research centres, and industries in several countries and with problems from many domains including nuclear power generation, aerospace and aviation, software engineering, land-based traffic, and healthcare.
His professional interests include industrial safety, resilience engineering, patient safety, accident investigation, and modelling large-scale socio-technical systems. He has published widely and is the author/editor of 20 books, including five books on resilience engineering, as well as a large number of papers and book chapters. The latest titles, from Ashgate, are “Resilient Health Care”, “FRAM – the Functional Resonance Analysis Method,” “Governance and control of financial systems”, and “Resilience engineering in practice: A guidebook”. Erik also coordinates the Resilient Health Care net (www.resilienthealthcare.net) and the FRAMily (www.functionalresonance.com)
The traditional approach to safety and safety management is to try avoid unacceptable risks, either by eliminating hazards or by preventing against consequences. This can easily be illustrated simply by looking at the definitions of safety that are found across all industries, according to which safety represents a condition where the number of adverse outcomes (accidents / incidents / near misses) is as low as possible. Since this is the first definition of safety, and until recently also the only one, it has been called Safety-I.
Since safety in this way is associated with preventing something from happening, investments in safety are often seen as a cost. Indeed, the gain is what is saved when accidents do not happen. The dilemma that has troubled safety management for years is that while costs are certain, gains are uncertain, and therefore harder to justify.
The dilemma can, however, be avoided by thinking of safety as a condition where the number of successful outcomes (meaning everyday work) is as high as possible. This changes the definition of safety from preventing something from going wrong (Safety-I) to ensuring that everything goes right (Safety-II). It also changes safety from being preventive to being productive. One important consequence of that that resources spent on safety no longer should be seen as a cost but as an investment. The logic is simple: something that goes right cannot at the same time go wrong. Investing in productive safety, in ensuring that something goes right, will therefore at the same time increase productivity and increase safety.
The talk will explore the practical consequences of this view.