Safety differently

Sidney Dekker (PhD Ohio State University, USA, 1996) is professor at Griffith University in Brisbane, Australia, where he runs the Safety Science Innovation Lab. He has won worldwide acclaim for his groundbreaking work in human factors and safety. He is the author of ten books that support the concept that safety with dignity means celebrating the expertise and craftsmanship that make things go well, and offering compassion, support and learning when they don’t.

Safety Differently: Human Factors for A New Era (2015)

Safety has increasingly become a bureaucratic accountability. It is concerned with reducing negative events and sees the human factor as a problem to control. Despite the transformation brought about by human factors, which asked not who was responsible, but what was responsible for triggering errors and failures, safety thinking once again tends to target people with behavioral interventions, rather than the system, the technology, or the environment in which people work.

‘Safety differently’ is about relying on people’s expertise, insights and the dignity of work as actually done to improve safety and efficiency. It is about halting or pushing back on the ever-expanding bureaucratization and compliance of work. Over the last two decades, safety improvements have flatlined (as measured in fatalities and serious injury rates, for instance) despite a vast expansion of compliance and bureaucracy.