“How could they have been so stupid?” “Why didn’t they show more common sense?” “They should have seen it coming.” “The cause was clearly human error.” “Why didn’t they just follow the procedures?” “This accident was clearly preventable.” Do these … Read More
incident investigations
Don’t Waste Your Safety Resources: Promote Worker Engagement
The most important asset we have in safety is our workforce. There are far more of them than there are of us and no one understands the work, and often the hazards, better than they do. In addition, as workers … Read More
Human Error: A Meaningless Term
“Egyptian authorities suggest that the Ever Given container ship that ran aground blocking the Suez Canal could have been due to human error.” Such headlines attributing serious accidents to “human error” are remarkably common following nearly every serious incident. But … Read More
Avoiding Blame in Incident Management & Incident Investigations
In the previous article, The Purpose of Incident Management & Incident Investigations, the foundational principles of learning and improving were discussed. Further, in the article How we React Matters the concept of how organizations react to news from the workforce … Read More
The Purpose of Incident Management & Incident Investigations
Incident management and incident investigations, while not typically welcome due to their nature of something having gone wrong, are a necessary tool in any EHS professional‘s toolbelt. They have been getting a bad reputation lately and pushed to ‘lagging indicator’ … Read More
Are Your Corrective Actions Really Fixing Your Problems?
Many highly successful companies are actively looking for trouble and are pleased when they find it. These companies know that you can’t improve if you don’t know what to improve. They establish various work feedback loops, encourage their managers to … Read More
