“We haven’t had a serious accident in 25 years.”
This is one of the most reassuring things a CEO can say. Wim Anrijs, General Manager at Rombit Europe, acknowledges that “Years of safe operations don’t happen by accident. They are the result of committed people, smart procedures, and a real focus on safety”.
But there’s a paradox.
The longer an organization operates without a serious incident, the easier it becomes to believe the biggest risks have been eliminated. Confidence slowly turns into certainty. And certainty can quietly turn into complacency.
A forklift takes a corner a little faster. A routine check gets skipped because “nothing has ever happened.” A shortcut saves a few seconds. An experienced but over-confident operator decides they know when a rule can be bent. None of these actions causes an accident on its own. In fact, mostly they don’t have any consequences at all.
Until one day they do. A reality that a recent string of serious and fatal accidents in port terminals and logistics has once again brought into sharp focus.
This is known as the normalization of risk. Small deviations become part of everyday work simply because they’ve never led to an incident before. Over time, yesterday’s exception becomes today’s standard.
Ironically, this often happens in organizations that take safety seriously.
“The absence of accidents is definitely something to be proud of,” Wim Anrijs confirms. “But it should never be mistaken for proof that the risks have disappeared. An accident-free record tells you what happened yesterday. It says very little about tomorrow”.
That’s why it’s called prevention.
Prevention aims not to make companies safer after something goes wrong. It’s to help good companies recognize the warning signs long before they become tomorrow’s headline.
The Prevention Paradox: the companies that feel safest may have the most to lose if they stop questioning how safe they really are.
This is the first in a three-part series. Part 2 will talk about “how ordinary work gradually turns into extraordinary accidents.” Part 3 will discuss “Why leading indicators matter more than lagging ones”