Humanising Safety and Embracing Real Risk
The Safety Control DelusionOne of the profound realizations of parenting is that you cannot control your own children. One of the stark realizations of marriage is that you cannot control your partner. Yet, here is Safety pushing all this delusional nonsense about ‘controlling’ others.There is a massive contradiction in the rhetoric of Safety. The mythology of ‘safety is a choice you make’ is … [Continue reading...] about The Safety Control Delusion
Understanding Harm MinimizationAs much as Safety might wish it, the real world is not binary black and white. Sometimes the most caring thing to do in a fallible world with fallible people is simply keep harm to a minimum. Harm minimization is the course of action that puts care at the centre of intelligent ethical decision making. This means that sometimes the lesser of two evils is better than … [Continue reading...] about Understanding Harm Minimization
Adverse Events: Eliminate or Anticipate?Blog by George Stavrou. Submitted as part of his assessment in Unit 5 of the Diploma in Social Psychology of Risk at The Centre For Leadership and Learning in RiskIn an endeavour to assist organisations better manage risk, the safety industry have designed various assessment tools to identify likely sources of harm, evaluate potential adverse effects and … [Continue reading...] about Adverse Events: Eliminate or Anticipate?
Complacency and The Wayward MindThe issue of complacency is a preoccupation of the risk and safety industry yet one can find little research in the sector beyond the excessive use of the label.It seems once we have declared something as ‘complacency’ we somehow know what has occurred. Usually complacency is interpreted as laziness, inattention or … [Continue reading...] about Complacency and The Wayward Mind
Risk Culture and Cultural RiskWhen the risk and safety industry defines culture it doesn’t consider critical aspects of culture. The most common definition is that culture is ‘what we do around here’ which fits in nicely with the behaviourist-cognitivist worldview that dominates the sector.So people in the risk industry role up to training programs thinking they are discussing culture but they … [Continue reading...] about Risk Culture and Cultural Risk
