Release of the Annual NordSafety HSEQ Trend Report

The report is compiled using contributions from a wide range of leading experts in the field of HSEQ, offering their predictions and hopes for the future of health and safety. The comprehensive 15-page report is free to download at: https://www.nordsafety.com/resources/safety-trend-report-2017/?utm_source=HSMSearch&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=march2017

The need for the Trend Report 2017

Timo Kronlöf from NordSafety, who is responsible for the report, said:

“When I was working as an EHS consultant, I kept asking myself why safety is seen in such a negative light by almost all stakeholders. The answer is quite easy when observed outside the box – safety is measured through negative KPIs and predominately led through discipline and sanctions. This negativity directly reflects on the levels of engagement and communication related to safety. I wanted to crack this challenge, and started asking leading professionals how they saw the situation – could the OHS industry overcome the vicious cycle of negativity, and what we could do to fix it? The first Safety Management Trend Report was released by NordSafety in 2016 to great feedback. This year, the report aimed and succeeded to display a more global perspective on the future challenges of OHS.”

Findings of the NordSafety Trend Report

Traditionally, health and safety management is often more about creating new regulations and broadening current compliance reporting than replacing old methods with innovations - NordSafety's new trend report shows that the focus should be elsewhere.

The group of highly respected safety scientists, consultants and company executives gathered for the new Safety Management Trend Report provided the insight that companies should focus on engaging people in safety rather than just introducing new means to collect safety-related data.

The panel of professionals, including Erik Hollnagel, Andrew Sharman, Sidney Dekker, Dominic Cooper, Walter Eichendorf, and Ho Siong Hin, argues that the focus of safety management should move closer to an individual and the daily work that is being undertaken. Since the way of working is rapidly evolving, it challenges those responsible for Safety Management within an organisation to question their methods and make them easier. This shift requires an increasing use of technology, not only to collect data more easily, but to obtain relevant information from OHS data.

The report indicates that the current flood of information is considered overwhelming, and that safety professionals need to find new ways to communicate via more personal and more contextual approaches based on attributes such as location and time.