All Articles

In safety, we often focus on physical hazards, equipment, procedures, permits, and compliance. But what about the invisible injuries that walk onto site each day? Trauma-informed counselling is a framework that recognises the widespread impact of trauma and understands how it can affect behaviour, decision-making, relationships, and risk perception. For safety professionals, understanding this approach isn't just relevant, it’s critical.

Supervision is often overlooked as a control, but make no mistake, if done properly it’s one of the most effective risk controls available to organisations across all industries. While it might not be a piece of equipment or a formal system, supervision is a dynamic, real-time control. One that can intervene, course-correct and support risk-based decision making at the exact moment it matters most.

When reviewing a risk register or investigating an incident, it’s common to find a long list of risk controls associated with a single hazard. But a long list of controls does not mean the hazard is being effectively managed. In fact, many of those listed controls may do very little to prevent harm.

A Bowtie Risk Analysis is a simple but powerful tool that helps us visually map out the causal pathways that lead to an unwanted event and the escalation paths that can make things worse. And unlike traditional methods, the bowtie focuses on what matters most – the causes.

You’ve updated your controls, you’ve done the toolbox talks, you’ve updated training packages and changed procedures, and yet – the same types of incidents keep happening. It’s easy to assume the problem is the worksite, the workers, or the hazard itself. But what if the real issue is your investigation process? What if your system isn’t learning – it’s just logging?