Practice of Creating Risk Management Systems Under the Safety II Concept

From the Classical Approach to the Safety II Concept

The traditional approach to HSE risk management is built on the analysis of negative events: we look for hazards that could lead or have already led to injuries and accidents. However, as Igor Lykov, Director of Industrial Safety and HSE at Segezha Group, notes, this approach overlooks the vast majority of work processes. According to statistics, for every negative event, there are thousands of positive ones where the work was completed without failures. The Safety II concept proposes shifting the focus: studying not only why errors occur but also why the system works successfully in most cases.

In his presentation, the speaker explains why it is impossible to create an absolutely safe workplace free of risks. Any worker, even the most disciplined one, makes mistakes daily and adapts to working conditions, creating a so-called "deviation corridor." Understanding this mechanism is the key to building an effective risk management system.

Changing the Attitude Toward Mistakes as a Resource for Development

A key insight of the Safety II concept is that worker mistakes are not a reason for punishment, but valuable material for analysis. If we acknowledge that humans are naturally rational and tend to "cut corners" to optimize work, we can identify hidden risks before they lead to an incident.

The speaker demonstrates by example that to identify these hidden behavioral patterns, HSE specialists need to spend more time "in the field," observing the actual execution of operations. This is the only way to understand how workers cope with abnormal situations and technological failures when they are left alone with a problem and forced to make decisions independently.

The Role of Line Management in Identifying Risks

Successful implementation of the Safety II concept requires a resource capable of speaking the same language as the workers and promptly solving emerging problems. The presentation details the experience of empowering shift and department supervisors with HSE authority. It is this level of management ("middle management") that has proven to be the most effective for gathering information about the real state of affairs.

Training line managers in observation methods and properly structuring dialogue with workers helped eliminate "cognitive biases" — the habit of ignoring routine violations. As a result, workers themselves began to talk about risks and mistakes, understanding that this information is used to improve working conditions, not to find someone to blame.

What you will learn from this webinar:

• Why the classical approach to risk assessment misses important data and how the Safety II concept solves this problem?
• How to change the attitude toward staff mistakes and turn them into a tool for preventing incidents?
• Who is best to involve as HSE representatives to get reliable information "from the field"?
• How to train line managers to notice hidden risks and properly build a dialogue with workers?
• How to separate project and operational activities in HSE to achieve real changes?