It’s always instructive to see what Safety gets excited about. Look at any of the fads about and do some simple Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). Look at what is said and what is NOT said in risk and safety to really see what is believed. Silences (https://safetyrisk.net/safety-culture-silences/) often tell you much more about an approach than the noise of brands, slogans and spin.

One of the latest publications Safety is excited about is called Energy-Based Safety, A Scientific Approach at Preventing Serious Injuries and Fatalities. This stuff has been about for ages, way back to the work of Derek Viner (1990) and ‘damaging energies’. The title reads like Heinrich’s title published in 1931, Safety loves nothing more than the discourse about a ‘scientific approach’.

As sure as I see claims to ‘science’ in safety I know it’s not about science. There is no openness to ‘scientific’ enquiry in risk and safety. Safety only wants to hear from what is within its boundaries, it doesn’t want to hear from disciplines it doesn’t like or critical thinking it deems ‘toxic’. The word ‘science’ is just a marketing word used by Safety to hide mono-disciplinarity in epistemology. The evidence for non-science is always demonstrated in the semiotics in the text.

Most of the semiotics masked as ‘science’ in safety are graphical representations of what Safety wants to see. And still Safety continues with the myth of ‘high-energy control risk assessments’. My favourite is the ‘energy wheel’, about as scientific as the risk matrix or the predictability by tarot cards.

Tell me, how do you control the unconscious decision-making of a person? How do you map person-centred moral judgments engaged in heuristics and ritual? What part does the psychology of perception play in the identification of so-called ‘energies’? How does one ‘control’ the hundreds of cognitive biases and hundreds of social influences as ‘energies’ in the workplace? How does one ‘predict’ what one will do in an hour? What are the ethical and moral implications of focusing on ‘energies’ not persons? Is there any correlation between experienced trauma and severity of injury? I wonder how much energy it takes to subtly and unconsciously bully a co-worker in the name of safety? How does one perceive and measure the unconscious energy of mis-belief?

Energy-based safety has no interest in these questions. Such are the silences of safety (https://safetyrisk.net/safety-culture-silences/) when it deems itself a ‘science’. You might as well ask, ‘How many angels can dance on a pin head’? There is no open enquiry in any of this.

When your enquiry is framed by ‘energy’ and ‘science’ you can ensure that discussion of moral meaning, ethics, helping, persons and care, retreat to the background.

The first thing that gets me in these fads in safety, is the amount of energy (excuse the pun) devoted to making sure there is never discussion about: persons, helping, community, care, trust, risk or ethics. I wonder what measure one might find in Safety for the energy committed to safety fads? (maybe a score of 10) It’s an easy sell (https://www.intersafe.com.au/risk-management/energy-concepts/) of safety mythology in the name of ‘science’ in the belief in measuring objects, all marketed as something ‘new’.

You can tell by the framing of the title that this is a focus on traditional safety: injuries, fatalities, production, performance and systems.

The first thing we need to know about ‘energies’ is that they cannot be ‘controlled’, ‘perceived’ or ‘measured’. I know, lets perceive the invisible, measure it, predict it and then control it! Safety loves this stuff.

However, if we move away from an objects (energy) focus on the world to an ecological understanding (on persons), then we learn to face the reality that risk and safety are a wicked problem (https://safetyrisk.net/making-the-wicked-simplistic-the-safety-way/ ).

But you won’t find much reading about wicked problems in safety, just as you won’t find any discussion on Transdisciplinarity (https://safetyrisk.net/safety-wicked-problem/; https://safetyrisk.net/transdisciplinarity-and-worldviews-in-risk/). The world of safety only wants to imagine that the world is solvable, fixable, predictable and controllable.

Any focus on injuries, fatalities, production, performance, ‘science’ and systems, will ensure that innovation will never come out of safety (https://safetyrisk.net/can-innovation-come-from-within-safety/).

Until Safety gets the idea that risk is a wicked problem, it will continue to seek solutions in systems to control the uncontrollable. It will continue to look for a focus on things it thinks it can ‘fix’ eg. hazards, energies.

How fascinating that after all these years of work in safety, there is still endless excitement about the magnitude and force of a ‘thing’ (energy). Of course, what Safety loves is the promise of ‘predictive validity’ in this work. And, it’s all about the engagement of a human body with a source of energy (objects), not about persons. What Safety doesn’t want to hear is, the moment you enter the world of fallible persons, there are no controls, predictions and fixes.

Prediction, controls, hazards, sources of energy and systems is just all the same old traditional safety. Safety loves this stuff. Anything it can do to avoid discussing the basics of: care, helping, persons, ethics, wicked problems, Transdisciplinarity and an ecological understanding of risk.

However, there is another valid view of risk other than a focus on objects that we offer in SPoR. In SPoR, we offer an ecological and holistic approach to the world of work that embraces the reality of risk as a wicked problem and an approach in Transdisciplinarity to ‘tackle’ it. If you want to find out more you can email here: admin@spor.com.au