Safety Differently

(c) Erik Hollnagel, 2020

The confusion about a New View

There has recently (i.e., from around 2015 and onward) been considerable writing and discussion about something referred to as a "new view" of safety. The label "new view" is used as a reference for different attempts to break the stalemate that has characterised safety practices (to say nothing of safety science) for many years. A "new view" may thus refer ideas / concepts/ proposals as diverse (and incompatible) as Safety Differently, HOP, Safety-II, Resilience Engineering, High Reliability Organisations, and Human Factors - either alone or in various combinations. The "new view" has also been used as a Prügelknabe for people who feel compelled to defend their own positions against imaginary foes. This, predictably, does not lead to much progress.

At the beginning of the century there was much discussion about a possible "new view" on "human error". While there were many good reasons to escape from the bias that the concept of "human error" had created, the logical solution would not be a "new view" but rather a "no view". In other words, stop using "human error" as if it was a meaningful term and instead focus on the characteristics of human performance and the role it plays in system performance.

The same kind of argument can be made for a "new view" of safety. It is clear that the traditional ways of looking at safety, including the ways of analysing and managing safety issues, have gone stale. But the answer to that should be a "no view" rather than a "new view" in the sense that safety should not be seen as an issue or a problem in itself but as an aspect or facet of system performance. Some suggestions for how to do that can be found here.

How does "Safety-II" differ from "Safety Differently"?

A frequently asked question is what difference, if any, there is between "Safety-II" and "Safety Differently". The quick answer is that there is no comparison, since the terms refer to two completely different ideas. Here is the explanation why.

"Safety-II" is about a different interpretation of what it means to be safe, namely that it refers to a condition where as much as possible goes well rather than to a condition where the number of accidents and incidents is kept as low as possible. Indeed, as explained in Safety as a homonym, it is actually not about safety at all. Being able to do things well is one aspect of how an organisation functions. Being able to do things efficiently is another. Being sustainable, producing good quality, meeting the expectations of stakeholders and customers are yet other aspects. What "Safety-II" really is about is the unification of activities that an organisation today needs to be able to function as intended and desired. It is about synesis!

In short, "Safety Differently" is about how to provide Safety-I in a more constructive and effective way, while "Safety-II" is not about safety at all but about how to develop and maintain the potentials of an organisation to function under varying conditions so that the number of intended and acceptable outcomes is as high as possible. QED

According to the conventional interpretation of safety, here called Safety-I, safety denotes a condition where as little as possible goes wrong, the focus of practical efforts whether in management or analysis is therefore on the occurrence of unacceptable outcomes and on how to reduce their number to an acceptable level, ideally zero and the emphasis is on how to manage safety eo ipso, as seen in the ubiquitous safety management Systems (SMS).


This approach, however leads to somewhat of a paradox since Safety in this way is defined and measured more by its absence than by its presence, as noted by Reason, (2000). According to a Safety-I perspective an accident thus represents a situation or a condition where there is or was a lack of safety. Which immediately raises the obvious question of how it is possible to learn about something if it only is studied in situations where it is not there?No known sciences can do that-- except safety science!!! And furthermore how is it possible to manage something that is not there? The simple answer is that it is impossible! THE UNACCEPTABLE OUTCOMES THAT SAFETY MANAGEMENT FOCUS ON ARE THE RESULTS OF SOMETHING THAT HAPPENED IN THE PAST,BUT DOES NOT HAPPEN ANY LONGER IT CAN THEREFORE NOT BE MANAGED!!!-- While you can manage a process  you cannot manage a product.These paradox fortunately disappears in the view proposed by Safety-II, where safety is defined as a condition where as much as possible goes well. An acceptable outcome therefore represents conditions where safety is present rather than absent, and efforts are accordingly directed at understanding how this happens and how one can ensure that it will happen also in the future. Logically, if as much as possible goes well, then as little as possible goes wrong,since in practice something cannot go well and go wrong at the same time. A Safety-II approach therefore achieves the same objective as a Safety-I approach, but does so in a completely different way. In Safety-II the concern is not to manage safety as a static outcome, hence using safety as a noun but to manage system performance safely, as a dynamic process, hence safely as an adverb. There is a crucial difference between managing safety and managing safely. The former represents a cost, since the purpose is to avoid something rather than to achieve something, while the latter represents an investment that directly contributes to productivity as well as increased revenue. It is therefore clearly more important and useful for a company to manage safely than to manage safety.


Since most work and most activities in practice go well, even though we fail to pay attention to them there will also be more cases to study sand learn from. Best of all, perhaps is that there is no need to wait for something to happen, i.e., to fail or go wrong. Something is happening all the time all we need to do is to pay attention to it

Reason, J. (2000). Safety paradoxes and safety culture. Injury Control & Safety Promotion, 7(1), 3-14.