Learning From Normal Work – Proactive Safety Through Everyday Insight
The challenge
As safety improves and incidents decline, traditional learning methods lose effectiveness. With fewer accidents to analyse, organisations struggle to identify risks, and recurring incidents still happen. Most work is completed without issue, but hidden challenges and adaptations often go unnoticed—until they contribute to future accidents. The question is: how can we keep improving safety when there are fewer failures to learn from?
The innovation
Learning From Normal Work (LFNW) is a proactive, research-backed framework based on Human and Organisational Performance (HoP), Safety II, and Human Factors. It focuses on how people adapt to everyday challenges - like missing tools or time pressure - and identifies “error traps” before they lead to incidents. By learning from success, not just failure, LFNW helps uncover hidden risks and improve systems before harm occurs.
How it works
LFNW is delivered in three phases:
- Foundations: Awareness sessions and leadership workshops
- Site enablement: Training for leaders, facilitators, supervisors, and workers, supported by coaching and tools like discussion cards
- Company integration: Embedding LFNW into risk assessments, investigations, and behavioural observations
Case study
LFNW has helped organisations reduce incidents by up to 37% without waiting for failures. It improves understanding of real work conditions, identifies system-level issues, and enhances leadership engagement. By surfacing procedural gaps and operational constraints, it enables practical improvements and reduces reliance on reactive safety measures.
Potential impacts
- Proactive risk reduction: Identifies hidden risks and precursors to incidents before harm occurs - without waiting for failures.
- Improved operational insight: Reveals the gap between procedures and real-world work, enabling practical system improvements.
- Enhanced leadership engagement: Encourages meaningful conversations between leaders and workers, shifting focus from compliance to support.
- Fewer incidents: Organisations have reported up to a 37% reduction in incidents by addressing risks surfaced through LFNW.
- Better decision-making: Tools like error trap discussion cards help teams uncover design flaws, procedural gaps, and system constraints.
- Cultural shift: Builds a learning culture where safety is driven by curiosity, not just compliance.
- Scalable and sustainable: Easily integrated into existing safety processes like risk assessments, audits, and behavioural observations.
- Date
- 22/07/2025
