Let’s be honest, if safety were truly working the way we hoped, we wouldn’t still be seeing serious incidents in even our best run operations. Many organisations have invested decades in safety systems, training, audits, and procedures. Yet workers still get hurt, and leaders are left asking, “Why didn’t we see this coming?”
The uncomfortable truth? Safety, as we’ve traditionally managed it, is broken.
But the good news is: some innovative leaders are doing something about it, and not in the ways you might expect.
So, What’s Broken About Safety?
1. We’ve Focused Too Much on Compliance, Not Capacity
Many safety systems are based on rules, procedures, and monitoring compliance. While rules matter, they only go so far. Work is complex, variable, and often unpredictable, no amount of procedure can prescribe every possibility.
As Safety Science reminds us, “Safety is not something you have, it's something you do”. And what you do needs to reflect real work, not imagined work.
2. We Measure What’s Easy — Not What Matters
Relying on injury rates and lag indicators gives a false sense of security. As highlighted in the Evaluating Improvement knowledge article, injury rates are a poor proxy for safety performance. Improvement might occur even as incident rates rise due to unrelated variables.
Smart organisations now focus on leading indicators like control effectiveness, operational learning, and climate surveys tailored to safety outcomes.
3. We Tell More Than We Ask
In many safety conversations, managers and safety professionals default to giving instructions. But telling shuts down learning. When we practice humble inquiry — asking with genuine curiosity, we open up space for workers to share what’s really happening.
Your frontline teams know where the risks and workarounds are. Smart leaders know the job is to ask, listen, and act on that information.
What Are Smart Leaders Doing Differently?
✅ They Focus on Work, Not Just Safety
The best safety outcomes come from understanding how work actually happens. As Erik Hollnagel puts it, there’s always a gap between work-as-imagined and work-as-done. Leaders who invest time learning how people adapt and succeed in their everyday work are the ones who are truly supporting safety.
✅ They Build Trust and Psychological Safety
Humble inquiry is more than just a technique, it’s a leadership mindset. Leaders who ask open questions and genuinely listen create a culture where people feel safe speaking up, even about mistakes.
This creates what safety scientists call a resilient organisation — one that adapts and learns before things go wrong.
✅ They Coach, Not Command
Great safety leaders don’t just enforce rules, they coach performance. They help people develop judgment, decision making, and problem solving skills under pressure.
Using models like GROW (Goal, Reality, Options, Will), coaching builds shared ownership of outcomes. It also helps people connect their role to the bigger picture.
✅ They Don’t Pretend Safety Is a Side Project
Smart leaders embed safety into operational strategy, not separate from it. That means aligning safety with organisational goals and actively involving all levels of staff in building and executing a meaningful safety strategy.
The most effective safety strategies treat learning from success as important as learning from failure.
The Shift from Command and Control to Connection and Curiosity
In traditional models, safety meant control. In modern models, it means connection.
From Safety Differently to Human and Organisational Performance (HOP), the “new view” of safety acknowledges that people are not problems to control but solutions to harness. Our job is to understand how work is done, support that work, and continuously learn.
So What Can You Do Today?
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Go see for yourself. Walk the floor, not to audit, but to learn.
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Ask better questions. Not “why aren’t you following the rule?” but “what makes it hard to follow this rule?”
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Involve your people. Let those who do the work co-create the solutions.
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Support your safety professionals. Empower them to coach, explore work, and challenge assumptions — not just administer programs.
Final Thought
Safety isn’t broken because people don’t care. It’s broken because we’ve been asking the wrong questions, chasing the wrong metrics, and focusing on control instead of capability.
Smart leaders are flipping the script.
Are you ready to lead the change?
A Humble Call to Action
If any part of this article resonated with you, even just a little, consider this a gentle nudge, not a directive.
The truth is, there’s no silver bullet. But there is a path forward, and it starts with curiosity, not control. With listening, not lecturing. With learning about the work, not just enforcing rules around it.
You don’t need to overhaul everything tomorrow. Maybe just begin by having one deeper conversation with a team member. Or spend ten minutes observing work with fresh eyes. Or ask a question you don’t already know the answer to.
Small shifts in how we lead can create big ripples in how safe and supported people feel.
You’re already doing important work. This is simply an invitation to do it a little differently, to lead safety not from a checklist, but from connection.
Let’s build a better safety story, together.
Many thanks to our significant influencers, Dr David Provan, Prof Sydney Dekker, Dr Eric Hollnagel and Prof Dave Woods.
