Safety Lessons From High-Reliability Organizations

In this episode, Mary Conquest speaks with Jodi Goodall, a High-Reliability Organization (HRO) expert who’s been in the safety profession for 20 years. Her operational experience spans mining, defense, explosives, heavy maintenance and logistics, and she’s currently head of organizational reliability at Brady Haywood, a consultancy in Brisbane.

Jody’s approach to Safety is based on systems thinking and the practices of HROs - and she begins this enlightening interview by explaining what strategies and organizations this acronym covers.

She walks EHS practitioners through the 5 characteristics of HROs, using practical examples of how they can enhance workplace safety:

1. Preoccupation with failure
2. Reluctance to simplify
3. Sensitivity to the operations
4. Commitment to resilience
5. Deference to expertise

Jodi explains that HRO is dotted throughout all the current safety theories and calls for HSE professionals to focus on practices, not academia and recognize that we’re all heading in the same direction.

She believes there’s too much investment in traditional Safety approaches and encourages the profession to welcome failure, trust the workforce, and be less judgemental and more helpful.

Find out more about Jodi’s work:

Brady Heywood | Complex Systems Thinking

Jodi recommends the work of Andrew Hopkins:

Amazon.com: Andrew Hopkins: Books, Biography, Blogs, Audiobooks, Kindle

And this book about the US Nay culture:

Extreme Operational Excellence: Applying the US Nuclear Submarine Culture to Your Organization eBook : DiGeronimo, Matt, Koonce, Bob: Amazon.com: Books

Jodi Goodall on LinkedIn:

Jodi Goodall | LinkedIn

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