Uncertainty in Safety Management

Abstract

Abstract Safety management is that subset of risk management concerned with minimizing harm to people. Although safety management emerged around occupational or personal (worker) safety, typically involving visible and familiar hazards, many industries pose process or system safety threats to workers, customers, and communities involving hidden, complex, and interconnected processes. Although it is often assumed that risks are known and uncertainty can be computed statistically (“known-unknowns”), there are also uncertainties that are difficult to imagine (“unknown-unknowns”) and uncertainties that are both known and unknown, especially in organizations where knowledge does not flow easily or is actively suppressed (“unknown-knowns”). This chapter examines the implications of uncertainty for safety around value tradeoffs, redundancy, root cause analysis, and learning and change. The author notes that front-line workers cannot negotiate these issues by themselves; leaders must acknowledge uncertainty, trust and engage the workforce, and invest in learning and innovation for long-term performance.