Safety is the integration of different disciplines.
All of them have just one purpose:
To make an activity safe.
To do this, we can define safety as a system
with two different concepts.
The first concept is the systemic thinking.
And then you can ask a question:
What is the definition of safety as a system?
The systemic thinking postulates
that many subsystems are interrelated
in order to understand their performance or operation and solve the problems.
Thus, we have to see the systemic thinking as a conceptual framework.
A context that has been developed during the last 70 years
that facilitates the clarity
and modification of all the different cultural patterns.
These cultural patterns
then guide the development of the organizational structures,
the working practices, the socialization of newcomers
and daily decision making.
In essence, the culture of an organization choreographs
all the activities undertaken by the organization itself.
From a management point of view,
it is important to notice
that the impact of culture is in many ways not perceived
by the organization itself.
Since all the members of the organization
consider all that fits in their cultural assumptions
or norms to be business as usual.
The second concept is the cycle of change.
This second concept,
when thinking of safety as a system, is that any system is like an organism
or a set of organized parts
with a number of different subsystems or components
that are in interaction.
It consists, as I have said,
in components which are entities of the system,
that in combination with other components of the system.
combine, separate or compare
the different causes that produce any consequences.
So this means that safety is a socio-technical phenomenon.
And as we have said, it is influenced
by many different beings.
From individuals, to groups, to management super functions,
or even society itself.
Each person and task has a potential on safety.
This means that each person
can describe the effect of his or her work on safety.
The interfaces are important.
Thus the organization promotes a good overview of work processes.
This means that there are multiple types
of safety in addition to operational safety.
Let's say occupational safety or environmental safety,
information security or security.
All of them are going to be taken into account.
So we can continue saying
that safety is a dynamic property of any activity
and it requires constant effort by all the stakeholders.
Also, it cannot be decomposed in meaningful factors.
If you remember,
when we were speaking about the history of safety,
at the very beginning, systems or safety were approached
by trying to understand
the different meaningful parts of any system.
As the decades passed,
systems became more and more complex.
So now it is not that easy to take a system,
separate the parts
and then understand the different factors.
Also,
we have to remember that it doesn't equal lack of accidents.
So safety doesn't mean that we don't have accidents.
It is true that our final goal is to reduce the accidents.
But at the end, it is impossible to reduce all the small events.
And this will guide us to the final part,
that is that safety effects are not linear.
This means
that the effects are not the sum of different events.
So sometimes small events at the beginning
can produce "high" or severe consequences.
That's why management has to focus on monitoring
all the activities or the high frequency events
if they are small
because they can produce severe consequences.