Understanding Safety-I and Safety-II: Two Complementary Approaches to Safety Management
In safety management, there are two prevailing perspectives: Safety-I and Safety-II. Each approach offers valuable insights into how organisations can manage risk, but they view human and system performance very differently. As workplaces become more complex, understanding these approaches and their applications is essential for improving both safety and productivity.
What is Safety-I
Safety-I is the traditional approach to safety management. Rooted in Frederick Taylor’s Scientific Management, this perspective treats safety as the **absence of accidents and failures**. It assumes that accidents occur because of identifiable causes—such as technology malfunctions, procedural errors, human mistakes, or organisational flaws. From a Safety-I standpoint, humans are often seen as a liability because of their variability, which makes them prone to failure.
The goal of Safety-I is to reduce errors and eliminate risks by identifying and fixing causes of incidents. For example, accident investigations (using methods like Root Cause Analysis) focus on identifying failures and contributing factors, while risk assessments aim to predict the likelihood of those failures.
But in today’s complex work environments, this approach has its limitations. Modern systems often rely on variability and flexibility to function effectively, which means it’s not enough to simply focus on what goes wrong. We need to understand how people adapt to ever-changing conditions to maintain safety and performance.
Introducing Safety-II
This is where Safety-II comes in. Developed as a complementary approach, Safety-II shifts the focus from what goes wrong to what goes right. Instead of viewing humans as a liability, Safety-II sees them as a key resource for managing variability and ensuring that systems succeed under diverse conditions.
Safety-II asks: How do things usually go right, and how can we ensure this happens more often? Investigations in this approach seek to understand everyday successes, using them to explain occasional failures. It focuses on improving systems by learning from successful performance, not just from accidents.
A key goal of Safety-II is to increase an organisation’s adaptive capacity—its ability to respond to unexpected events effectively. Rather than waiting for incidents to happen and then fixing them, Safety-II promotes continuous learning and adaptation, helping organisations better manage the complexities of modern work.
Why Shift to a Safety-II Approach?
Safety-II is especially relevant in today's dynamic work environments. As work becomes more complex and interconnected, the traditional approach of controlling variability doesn’t always lead to better outcomes. In fact, embracing variability and understanding how humans successfully manage it is crucial for maintaining both safety and productivity.
According to Dr Todd Conklin, a leading voice in Human and Organisational Performance (HOP), Safety-II is about understanding why things go right and learning how to increase those successes. This perspective turns safety into an investment in resilience and productivity, rather than just a process of failure prevention.
The Future of Safety Management
Safety-I and Safety-II aren’t mutually exclusive. In fact, they are complementary approaches that can be used together to create a more resilient and adaptable safety system. While Safety-I helps identify and eliminate failures, Safety-II encourages organisations to invest in understanding and enhancing the capabilities that lead to success.
By combining both perspectives, organisations can not only prevent accidents but also improve overall performance, ensuring that as many things as possible go right.
Join the Conversation
How are you integrating Safety-II principles in your safety management approach? What successes have you seen when focusing on how things go right? Let’s share ideas and continue this important discussion.