Revisiting Heinrich’s Impact on Safety -- Ep. 76

In this episode, Mary Conquest speaks with Carsten Busch - the "Indiana Jones of Safety", who has over 25 years of experience in HSEQ Management. and is a tutor in the Lund University human factors and system safety program.

Carsten is also a Safety historian and has extensively researched and written about the work of Herbert William Heinrich - and shares his finding with us in this fascinating interview.

Heinrich is considered by many to be the founder of modern Safety practice, but has become a polarizing figure in today’s safety discourse.

Carsten believes Heinrich’s work and legacy should be reappraised, and he helps Safety professionals understand what he actually wrote - rather than basing their knowledge on hearsay.

One of Carsten’s main concerns is that New View Safety authors aren’t applying their own principles when they criticize Heinrich and could be positioning his work to reinforce their own approaches.

Context is key and you’ll discover what Heinrich actually said, who his primary audience was (not Safety professionals!), and the surprising role insurance companies played in enhancing Workplace Safety in the 1930s.

Carsten’s book investigating Heinrich:
Preventing Industrial Accidents: Reappraising H. W. Heinrich
https://www.routledge.com/Preventing-...

Recommended additional reading from Heinrich’s time:
Men and machines: Amazon.com: Chase, Stuart
https://www.amazon.com/Men-machines-S...

Find out more about Carsten’s work:
https://www.mindtherisk.com/

Carsten on LinkedIn:
  / carsten-busch-64909517  


Safety Labs is created by Slice, the only safety knife on the market with a finger-friendly® blade. Find out more: https://www.sliceproducts.com/

If you have any questions, please email us at [email protected]

__________

TABLE OF CONTENT

0:00 Intro
02:40 A Safety Mythologist
03:56 Why it’s important to actually read Heinrich’s work
07:19 Ethical implications of misunderstanding Heinrich
12:35 Heinrich’s background
13:48 A short history of Safety
22:15 The role of insurance companies in driving workplace Safety
26:20 Heinrich’s work was intended for Safety professionals
29:53 New View’s attitude to Heinrich
36:25 It’s too easy to critique Heinrich
39:05 Why Heinrich described his work as a “scientific approach”
43:20 Blending Safety-1 and Safety-2
45:18 Heinrich’s language issue
48:56 Modern Safety discourse
50:41 Questions are more important than answers in Safety
51:35 Start reading about Safety earlier
53:02 Recommended resources for Safety professionals