Why Human Error Is Not the Problem, With Jake Mazulewicz

There's a dangerous assumption still deeply embedded in many workplaces that if people would just follow the rules, incidents wouldn't happen. But what if that thinking is actually making safety worse?

My conversation with Jake Mazulewicz challenged a lot of conventional thinking around human error, procedures, investigations and safety leadership. Drawing on experience from firefighting, emergency medicine, military operations and human reliability, Jake shares a practical and refreshingly honest perspective on how people really make decisions under pressure, why experts don't simply follow procedures, and how resilient Organisations learn from mistakes rather than punish them.

This was one of those discussions that makes you stop and rethink how safety is approached day to day. Plenty of practical insights throughout that leaders can apply immediately.

Highlights from the conversation:

Human error: Signals for learning, not failures to punish
Safety rules: Why too many procedures can reduce reliability
Decision making: The four layers experts use under pressure
Resilience: Building systems that tolerate inevitable mistakes
Investigations: Looking beyond who touched it last
Psychological safety: Encouraging honest reporting and learning
Near miss reporting: Making learning simple and non-punitive
Work as done: Understanding how work really happens safely

Resources and actions:

Sign up for a future Safety Roundtable: https://safetyroundtable.co.uk/
Connect with Jake on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jake-mazulewicz/
Check on Jake Book (Seven Practical Steps: How to Build Reliability, Safety, and Trust in Technical Teams): https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FPFQ65GX
Connect with Christian on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christian-harris-slip-safety/

Tämä jakso on lisätty Podme-palveluun avoimen RSS-syötteen kautta eikä se ole Podmen omaa tuotantoa. Siksi jakso saattaa sisältää mainontaa.

Jaksot(289)

Why Working Parent Burnout Is a Workplace Risk (with Dr. Rosina McAlpine)

Christian Harris is joined by Dr. Rosina McAlpine, award-winning educator and founder of Win Win Parenting, to explore why burnout among working parents deserves to be treated as a genuine workplace r...

18 Syys 48min

Sliptember Masterclass: Why Slip Safety Is a Grip Problem, Not a Slip Problem

Christian Harris hosts a live Sliptember masterclass, walking through the data, science and method behind reducing slip risk and improving legal defensibility. Recorded as part of the Safety Roundtabl...

11 Syys 1h 1min

Launching Sliptember 2026: Why Almost Every Organisation Is Getting Slip Safety Wrong

Christian Harris opens this year's Sliptember campaign with the story of Dennis Satchell, who suffered multiple hip fractures after a fall at a Tesco Extra in 2015, and what environmental health offic...

4 Syys 14min

Why You Might Be Letting Your Employer Own Your Career (with Paul Goodreau)

Christian Harris joined by Paul Goodreau, a former hydrogeologist who went on to become a CEO, business leader and now author and career coach, for a conversation about ownership, career planning and ...

28 Elo 46min

Louise Hosking: Inside the Choice Chain, a New Way to Think About Organisational Decisions

Christian is joined again by Louise Hosking, who has spent the last six months developing a new framework called the Choice Chain. It started with a question Christian asked on a webinar about why mor...

21 Elo 58min

State of Safety 2026: Why the Biggest Risks Get the Least Attention

Christian Harris shares the results of the third annual State of Safety survey in this Safety Roundtable session. The data reveals a clear priority gap. Manual handling, slips and trips consistently c...

14 Elo 48min

Amar Shahzad: Rethinking Safety Metrics, Human Factors and the Future of the Profession

In this episode, Christian Harris speaks with Amar Shahzad, founder of the Occupational Health and Safety Institute Sweden and host of the Safety by Amar Shahzad podcast. Amar opens up about the wor...

7 Elo 46min

The Human Side Of Safety, with Wyatt Bradbury

Wyatt Bradbury of Avetta, ASSP's 2026 Safety Professional of the Year, joins Christian for a Safety Roundtable on building genuine safety culture across an interconnected workforce of direct staff, co...

31 Heinä 49min