Safety Heroes - the Health, Safety, and Environment Podcast
The Health, Safety, and Enviroment space is made of everyday people who are real-life heroes, committed to creating a safe environment and engaging safety culture within their companies. Their priority is to ensure each and everyone of their employees gets to return home after a day’s work unharmed, and that both wellbeing and the planet are a core consideration: they are unsung heroes.
In fact, you never hear about them when they do their jobs right!
We want to celebrate these everyday people and inspire others in that space to look at things differently, improve their safety management plans and overall learn as a collective; making “HSE” a cornerstone of every company’s culture.
So let’s celebrate those leaders from the Health, Safety, and Environment space who stand on the frontline and the emotional/human implications of working in the safety space.
Safety Heroes - the Health, Safety, and Environment Podcast
Remy D.J. Wierenga - From embracing the 5 Human Performance Principles to the AI revolution - A conversation on the past, present, and future of the HSE field
Today we have Remy Wierenga, Group Safety Director at Refresco as our guest and we dive deep into Human Performance Principles and how AI will become an increasingly powerful support tool in keeping people safe. And both for these make for a fascinating episode.
Remy shares his insights on the evolution of safety practices, emphasising the significance of focusing on human and organisational performance, and the transition from a blame-focused culture where we set ourselves for failure if we frame the worker as the main control system, to one that seeks to understand and mitigate error through well-designed systems and controls.
His experience demonstrates the critical role of leadership in fostering a safety culture that prioritises learning and improvement over blaming; recognising that human make mistakes and once we understand and accept that, things can change in the right direction.
Remy specifically delves into the intricacies of incident investigation and the importance of separating error from event, advocating for a shift towards understanding the human element within organisational safety.
He discusses the challenges of addressing safety with traditional methods that fail to accommodate human error, and the potential of technological advancements, such as AI and robotics, to significantly reduce incident rates by improving control systems.
And these insights underscore a broader shift towards more adaptive, resilient safety measures that account for human variability, which is both our failing and our strength and uniqueness.
The conversation also explores the future of safety in the workplace, considering the rapid advancements in technology and AI and how powerful this will be.
Remy highlights the need for safety professionals to evolve their skill sets and embrace new methodologies that align with these changes; emphasising again learning and continuous improvement as key elements of safety management.
He advocates for a more holistic, principled approach to safety that integrates human performance principles; wrapping the conversation up with thoughts on the importance of controls in managing risks effectively, pointing towards a future where safety management is deeply intertwined with technological innovation and human-centric design.
Follow his journey on Linkedin.
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Do you want to be a guest on Safety Heroes, or know someone who would be a great fit? We’d love to hear from you. Send us a message on LinkedIn or email podcast@pixaera.com.
