Challenging the Way We Think About Safety
On June 16, 2026, National Safety Services’ Chief Operating Officer, Nicole Orr, CRSP, presented at the American Society of Safety Professionals (ASSP) Safety Conference in Anaheim, California.
Her session, “Outdated Safety Theories and Practices: Is It Time to Move On?”, challenged attendees to reconsider some of the industry’s most established assumptions about safety performance and risk management.
Throughout the presentation, Nicole explored how decades of research, experience, and evolving work environments have shaped today’s safety practices. While significant progress has been made, many organizations continue to rely on legacy thinking that may no longer reflect the realities of modern, complex operations.
She addressed the resistance that often accompanies change, from familiar phrases such as “We’ve always done it this way,” to concerns that “We don’t have time” or “It’s too expensive.” These barriers can prevent organizations from adopting approaches that better reflect today’s operational risks.
One of the presentation’s most thought-provoking statements challenged traditional performance metrics:
“If leadership still believes, ‘Our TRIR is low, therefore we are safe,’ they are operating with a 1970s mental model in a world of complex risk systems.“
This message reinforced a central theme of the presentation: safety performance cannot be measured solely by counting injuries after they occur. Instead, organizations should focus on proactively identifying and managing the conditions that have the potential to result in Serious Injuries and Fatalities (SIFs).
Nicole also revisited the industry’s long-standing reliance on Heinrich’s and Bird’s Safety Pyramids. While both models have contributed significantly to the evolution of safety management, modern research suggests they should no longer be viewed as predictive models for preventing serious events. Their underlying assumption, that a higher number of minor incidents directly predicts a greater likelihood of major incidents, is increasingly challenged by evidence from high-risk industries, where catastrophic events often arise through entirely different pathways than low-consequence injuries.
The presentation also explored the concept of Zero Harm, emphasizing that its value depends largely on how it is interpreted. As an aspiration, that no one should be injured at work, it provides a powerful vision that most safety professionals support. However, when interpreted as a guarantee that all incidents can be eliminated, it may unintentionally shift focus away from understanding and managing the complexity of real work.
Nicole concluded by encouraging organizations to move beyond simply measuring safety performance and instead focus on building resilience. This means identifying critical risks, learning from serious injury and fatality precursors, installing, maintaining, and verifying critical controls, and engaging every level of the organization in meaningful conversations about serious risk.
As safety continues to evolve, so too must the way we think about it. By embracing evidence-based practices and focusing on resilience rather than simply counting injuries, organizations can better position themselves to prevent harm and strengthen their overall safety performance.
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