There’s hardly a day goes by in safety where a new slogan, brand and spin has to be developed because Safety continues to have little idea what to do. Of course, the ‘new focus’ is SIF (Serious Incident and Fatality Prevention). So, if this is a ‘new focus’ what the hell was Safety doing for… Read More The Propaganda of SIF – SafetyRisk.net

When considering sign-symbol systems, does Safety think about trade-offs and by-products made symbolically? When trying to present a message symbolically, does Safety consider any of the basics of semiotics? Does Safety understand that signs, symbols, icons and metaphors command a different understanding of messaging? Does Safety think that these media are a different language than… Read More What Do Your Safety Symbols Say? – Episode Three Podcast Series – Safety Semiotics

The foundation of an ethic in risk must begin by an understanding of persons. I saw a curriculum outline recently by one of the safety associations teaching ethics in safety, and it had no mention of persons or human ‘being’. The best disciplines to help understand human personhood are: psychology, education, anthropology, social psychology, philosophy,… Read More Safety – From Objects to Subjects (From Error to Persons)

As a follow up to our free book SPoR and Semiotics, Methods to Tackle Risk Matt Thorne and Rob Long have commenced a podcast series called Safety Semiotics. The series seeks to explain the purpose of semiotic thinking and sets up the foundations for the videos to follow which analyses many of the semiotics of… Read More Safety Semiotics Podcast Series – SafetyRisk.net

It is so odd that Safety talks about: ‘human error’, ‘human and organisational performance’, ‘human factors’ and yet none of these talk about human personhood. Indeed, texts on human error by Reason, Dekker and others have no focus at all on what it is to be human or the nature of being human. Such books… Read More Where is the Human in Safety?