We never stop learning!
There are so many ways to expand your knowledge and upskill your understanding of safety and human behaviour.
Here are some of our favourites to spark your curiosity.
IF YOU WANT TO DIVE INTO THE FOREFRONT OF
SAFETY MANAGEMENT
INCREMENTAL SAFETY PRACTICES - Erik Hollnagel and David Slater's latest book on managing systemic safety through making sure as many things as possible go well. Includes a fascinating chapter by Pete McCarthy and Valerie Stait on Adaptive Safety Learning (ok, we may be biased!) https://www.routledge.com/Incremental-Safety-Practices/Hollnagel-Slater/p/book/9781041001096
FORGEWORKS - Research translated into practical insights for improving the safety of work. And the work of safety. https://safetyofwork.com/
SAFETY DIFFERENTLY - Challenging safety thinking: from compliance to enabling human capacity. https://safetydifferently.com/
SAFETY ON TAP – Andrew Barrett, Practical human factors insights that translate straight into better safety.
THE HOP HUB - practical tools and ideas for applying Human and Organisational Performance https://www.hophub.org/
SAFETY DIFFERENTLY, THE MOVIE - a rethink of safety by Sidney Dekker that shows real risk isn’t mitigated by increasing rules, but by trusting and supporting people to adapt and succeed in everyday work. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EeIucLnEa24
THE WOOLWORTHS EXPERIMENT – compliance and safety are not necessarily the same thing. What happens to behavior and outcomes when you take rules and safety clutter away? https://safetydifferently.com/the-woolworths-experiment/
HELI OFFSHORE - Practical guidance and tools supporting a modern, system-based approach to safety that has human performance at the center.
Safety performance model: https://www.helioffshore.org/spm Safety resources:
IOGP
https://www.iogp.org/workstreams/safety/safety/human-performance/ science-based principles that connect human performance to real-world safety outcomes.
SAFETY II IN PRACTICE –
The Operational Learning Review (OLR)
https://safetyconference.balpa.org/resources
https://skybrary.aero/bookshelf/safety-i-safety-ii-white-paper
HOW DO WE LEARN FROM HUMAN ERROR? Captain Ben Bosshardt explains that what appears as error is shaped by deeper context and system level influences — this video shows how deeper understanding, not blame, drives safer outcomes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2hH1THgu7dU
IF YOU’RE CURIOUS ABOUT HUMAN FACTORS AND HUMAN PERFORMANCE
THE INVISIBLE GORILLA - Chabris & Simons’ humorous demonstration of attentional blindness and perception limits https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJG698U2Mvo&t=1s
THE LORD SMYTHE MURDER WHODUNNIT SCENE - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSy7Qf_I4v0 expectation-driven perception.
HINDSIGHT MAGAZINE - an outstanding resource that explores how people, systems, and context shape everyday work and human performance https://skybrary.aero/articles/hindsight-eurocontrol
SKYBRARY - https://skybrary.aero/ (search ‘human performance’) lots of easy to digest resources to expand your knowledge of human factors, performance and behaviour.
THINKING FAST AND SLOW - Daniel Kahneman - a classic read exploring biases, heuristics and how humans actually make decisions.
THE DESIGN OF EVERYDAY THINGS, Don Norman - a fascinating look at how design and human information processing shape behavior.
A FIELD GUIDE TO AIRLINE ACCIDENT AND INCIDENT INVESTIGATION
a Pratical Handbook for Aviation Professionals
Dr. Pete McCarthy.
The Field Guide to Airline Accident and Incident Investigation helps aviation professionals turn accidents, incidents, and everyday operational disruptions into opportunities for meaningful safety improvement. Rather than accepting quick explanations or concentrating solely on individual mistakes, it encourages investigators to examine the wider circumstances that influence decisions and performance.
Designed for practical use within airlines, the book brings together human factors, systems thinking, and evidence-based investigation methods, covering everything from initial notification and evidence preservation to analysis, conclusions, and organisational action. Its focus extends beyond major accidents to the near misses and routine events that reveal how operations function in practice. For safety specialists, investigators, and operational leaders, it offers an experience-informed approach to fair, proportionate, and thorough inquiries, helping organisations translate their findings into changes that strengthen future safety.
IF YOU’RE INTERESTED IN MAKING SENSE OF ACCIDENTS, INCIDENTS AND HUMAN BEHAVIOUR
PRE-ACCIDENT INVESTIGATIONS – Dr. Todd Conklin. Learning before things go wrong in this podcast series from a safety legend.
DISASTERCAST – Dr. Drew Rae. A podcast exploring failure to understand how systems and the people in them really behave.
CAUTIONARY TALES – Tim Harford’s podcast. When good stories reveal how systems and context shape decisions and outcomes.
WHY DID IT MAKE SENSE? – Gareth Lock. A varied podcast that goes beyond the ‘first stories’ to understand why actions made sense to the people involved at the time.
A FIELD GUIDE TO UNDERSTANDING HUMAN ERROR - Sidney Dekker – an iconic read that reframes ‘human error’ by exploring the context, pressures, and system influences underlying actions.
FRIENDLY FIRE - Scott Snook - a powerful case study showing how everyday decisions in normally functioning complex systems can combine to produce dramatic outcomes.
NORMAL ACCIDENTS - living with High-Risk Technologies, a classic read by Charles Perrow - https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691004129/normal-accidents?srsltid=AfmBOoqjB9ijKl9U4awHQu0khIEx6xKPTIazCF79wWBtp6TU2mZjLVWX
HOW COMPLEX SYSTEMS FAIL - Richard Cook gets right down to the essence of how systems work operationally systemhttps://how.complexsystems.fail/
CAPTAIN HINDSIGHT - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opfXmYlTotc from the makers of Southpark - a humorous look at counterfactual reasoning
IF WELLBEING IS IMPORTANT IN YOUR WORK
CORNEXUS - Integrated wellbeing systems for safety-critical industries and defining wellbeing as the foundation of performance and safety https://www.cornexus.com.au/
HARM BY DESIGN: Psychosocial Risk Management at Work- Jamie Mallinder at the cutting edge of psychosocial work design, exploring how it not only influences individual behaviour, but fundamentally shapes how organisations operate.
THE LIFT EFFECT PODCAST - Matt McNeil - putting pilot wellbeing at the centre of safe performance.
WATCH
LISTEN
READ
People often ask us where to start evolving their safety practice, a great starting point is changing the language you use. Language is the foundation that shapes our perceptions of safety and influences how we view safety practices within an organisation. Neutral, blame-free language helps build a culture of openness, collaboration, and trust that is essential for effective safety management in a just culture. We explain more in the 'New View in Practice' and 'Evolving Safety' webinars above.
A word cloud with this kind of language on an office wall is a subtle but powerful way to introduce new ways of thinking about safety. Feel free to use this one or use it as inspiration to create your own.
WORDS CREATE WORLDS
THE LANGUAGE OF RESILIENCE
Available to download, these word clouds based on Professor Eric Hollnagel's four resilience potentials (anticipate, monitor, respond, learn) were derived from operational language such as safety and training reports that bring academia into the normalised language of everyday work.
