Series: OHS — Foundation and Evolution · Part 2 of 2

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Beyond checklists: Non-standard approaches to OSH management

How modern international practices complement the Bulgarian model of occupational safety and health

In Bulgarian OHS practice, we often follow a well-trodden path - risk assessment according to familiar templates, instructions against signature, checklists and protocols. Compliance with regulatory requirements is mandatory. However, an increasing number of consultants and employers are noticing that many accidents do not occur because of lack of rules, and spite of their existence.

This article examines modern approaches that build on the classic safety model — not to replace it, but to make it work better.

Social Psychology of Risk (SPoR)

The SPoR discipline, created by Dr. Robert Long in Australia in 2003, starts from the proposition that risk is a social construct. The decisions that workers make in the field are not simply rational calculations—they are influenced by peer pressure, identity, unconscious heuristics, and team relationships.

SPoR criticizes "totalitarian" models such as Zero Harm and crude forms of behavior-based safety because they reduce the complexity of human behavior to simple cause-and-effect schemes.

In practical terms, SPoR works with small conversations — iCue engagement with no more than 2–3 people. Research on the bystander effect and groupthink shows that in larger groups the quality of risk assessment drops dramatically. The methods are visual, semiotic, experiential — not new checklists, but tools for deep understanding.

Human and Organizational Performance (HOP)

HOP, developed by Todd Conklin and Sidney Dekker, is based on five principles:

In practice, HOP replaces the question „"Who is to blame?"“ с „"What in the system allowed the error to happen?"“ The approach has long been applied in aviation and nuclear energy, and has recently entered the construction and manufacturing industries.

Safety-II — learning from success

Erik Hollnagel proposed a revolution in safety thinking. Instead of studying only incidents (Safety-I), it is more useful to understand why thousands of operations are successful.

Safety-II examines and learns from everyday adaptations—the trade-offs operators make to compensate for system deficiencies. Success is not the absence of errors, but the actively achieved result.

Just Culture

James Reason's concept, further developed by Sidney Dekker, makes a critical distinction:

• Honest mistake → Support and learning
• Risky behavior → Coaching and guidance
• Willful violation → Disciplinary measures

Without this framework, employers punish all three equally, and the result is that people stop reporting and the organization goes blind.

Experiential learning and Dojo spaces

The Japanese concept of dojo room — a physical space with several zones where workers experience the risk „on dry land“ — has been successfully implemented at Toyota, Bosch, and Schneider Electric.

The Trakia Economic Zone around Plovdiv already has several manufacturing enterprises that are experimenting with training corners - for working with PPE, for recognizing fall hazards, for extinguishing an incipient fire.

Microlearning and gamification

Two-hour quarterly training sessions have long since lost the battle for attention. Short 3–5 minute videos sent on Viber or WhatsApp every Monday morning produce measurably better results.

Point systems, „safety hero of the month,“ miniature competitions between teams—small mechanics that work because they fit the way people actually process information.

Take 5 and Last Minute Risk Assessment

Australian mining industry promotes postcards Take 5 — five questions a worker asks himself just before starting a task:

1. Stop — break the automatism
2. Look around — check the environment
3. Think about it. — identify the risks
4. Rate — make a decision to control
5. Act — step safely

A five-line card filled out in a minute often does a better job than a 20-page plan for a specific task. In our country, this practice is implemented in several multinational branches, but it rarely reaches medium and small enterprises - which is where the need is.

Psychological safety and the right to stop work

Research by Amy Edmondson at Harvard shows that teams with high psychological safety report more errors—and therefore have less serious accidents. The causal relationship is counterintuitive but robust.

Toyota introduced the famous andon cord — any operator can stop the production line. In our country, this practice rarely exists outside of a few multinational enterprises. It is precisely this that is the heart of a mature safety culture.

Real lessons

Paul O'Neill, when he took over Alcoa in 1987, told investors that his only priority would be safety. Wall Street analysts laughed. Within 13 years, the company had increased its market capitalization fivefold and become one of the safest in the world.

The Norwegian oil industry, after the Alexander Kjeland platform disaster in 1980, switched to a model where the workers themselves have legal mandate to stop dangerous operations. The accident prompted a reform of the entire Norwegian regulatory framework—proof that systemic lessons can be learned from tragedies, not just punishments.

Conclusion

Compliance with the Occupational Health and Safety Act, Regulation RD-07-2 and ISO 45001:2018 is necessary, but not sufficient. Safety is a living organism — social, psychological, cultural.

The consultant who can offer his client not a folder of documents, but a real change in mindset, is the one that creates real value. Bulgarian business has yet to learn the lessons that world leaders are already paying dearly to learn — and this is where the opportunity for meaningful consulting work lies.