Safety I and Safety II: Different approaches with the same goal, experts say

Orlando, FL — Safety I and Safety II have divergent viewpoints, but they can be united and aligned into “Safety Seriously.”

That was a key message during Tuesday’s Occupational Keynote at the 2024 NSC Safety Congress & Expo.

Corrie Pitzer, CEO and founder of Safemap International and a longtime Safety II proponent, shared the Valencia Ballroom stage with Tim Page-Bottorff, senior safety consultant at SafeStart and a “big advocate” of Safety I.

Their presentation originated, in part, from meeting in Australia, where they began to build a bridge between Safety I and Safety II.

Pitzer and Page-Bottorff developed six key points:
Safety during “critical work” is unconditional. In situations where an error can lead to death or catastrophe, organizations should “not accept anything less than perfection.” Said Pitzer, “Sometimes, blame fixes something.”
Humans are the strongest link in your safety system. People have the ability to identify risk intuitively – on the fly sometimes – and manage it.
Behavior drives behavior. Give people mastery of their skills, make them masters of understanding risk, let them share in the purpose of the organization and give them authority to make decisions.
Focus on “dynamic discovery.” Safety I’s focus on things going wrong and Safety II’s focus on things going right are both past tense. “The human is the most potent risk discoverer in your company,” Pitzer said.
Learn from “far misses.” Said Pitzer: “We can’t afford to learn from accidents. We can’t afford to learn from near misses because it’s too late.” Instead, “think forward” in everything you do.
Be ready to respond to risk. Safety lives in the present and the past, but risk lives in the future, Pitzer said. Organizations, safety professionals and workers need to be ready to respond to risk.

“Safety is an egg,” Page-Bottorff said, using the metaphor to explain how the two approaches can be combined. “When you crack open the egg, you’ll have an egg yolk and an egg white. Inside you might have two different approaches. You might eat the egg white or the yolk.

“Everybody has their own way they like to eat their eggs. But overall, the egg is still an egg. We’re still trying to protect people from harm.”