As organisations move toward 2026, safety systems must evolve from static compliance models into adaptive, people-centred frameworks.
The risks ahead taking various forms of digital dependence, climate volatility, workforce fatigue, and supply chain uncertainty, requires proactive checks that strengthen both systems and decision-making. Victory Bernard reports with experts’ perspectives.
Organisations are being challenged to reassess how they identify risk, train their workforce, communicate across levels, and respond to overlapping emergencies. Safety preparedness is no longer about having policies in place; it is about ensuring those policies work under real-world pressure.
Key checks include the ability to prioritise risk effectively, maintain strong information flow, design work with human limitations in mind, and train teams for complex, multi-event scenarios. Without these foundations, even well-documented safety programs may fail when tested.
1.) Strengthen Risk-Based Decision-Making: Organisations must be able to prioritise hazards quickly and consistently, especially during overlapping events. Risk matrices and tolerance thresholds should guide decisions at all levels.
2.) Reinforce the Hierarchy of Controls: Even under financial or resource constraints, decisions should prioritise elimination, substitution, and engineering controls over administrative measures and PPE.
3.) Prepare for Multi-Event Scenarios: Emergency preparedness must reflect real-world complexity, including simultaneous incidents, coordinated team responses, and dynamic risk conditions.
4.) Design Systems That Anticipate Human Error: Safety systems should support error tolerance, recovery, and learning rather than assume perfect human performance.
5.) Improve Information Flow and Trust: Workers must feel safe to report concerns, near misses, and emerging risks. Poor communication remains one of the most underestimated safety failures.
6.) Integrate Climate, Cyber, and Supply Chain Risks: Safety planning must move beyond the workplace boundary to include environmental exposure, digital systems, and supplier practices.
From a systems-thinking perspective, Mathew Goncalves, Head of Research at Health and Safety Dialogue Company Ltd, emphasised that organisations must rethink how they design safety for people, not against them.
He explained that Human and Organisational Performance (HOP) encourages leaders to see workers as contributors to safety, rather than liabilities to be controlled.
Goncalves highlighted that trust and psychological safety are prerequisites for effective information flow. Accordingly, when workers feel safe to share concerns, organisations gain early visibility into emerging risks- whether related to cyber security, mental health strain, or operational shortcuts.”
He also noted that learning should extend beyond incidents to include everyday work, where successful adaptations often reveal how systems truly function. He added that communication quality matters as much as content.
Understanding signs, symbols, and language-through semiotics and semantics- helps ensure safety messages are interpreted as intended. Poorly designed warnings or instructions, he explained, can introduce risk even when policies are technically correct.
Mathew Goncalves added that system design must support human performance, not punish natural error: “Context drives behaviour. Leaders need to understand the situations workers face and design processes that anticipate normal human variability.”
“Psychological safety allows workers to report issues, enabling proactive risk management across cyber, climate, and operational domains. By observing how tasks are actually performed, organisations can identify hidden risks and strengthen safety before incidents occur.”
“Psychological safety allows workers to speak up—and prevents harm before it happens.” He said.
Drawing from her experience, Mary Stine, MSc, ASP, Director at ISB Global Corporation, explained to HSENations that organisations entering 2026 must invest in structured yet flexible safety frameworks.
She stressed that clear objectives, combined with adaptable execution, allow teams to respond effectively even when conditions change rapidly.
She highlighted the importance of using risk matrices to drive evidence-based decisions, particularly when financial or resource constraints exist.
According to Stine, when risk tolerance is clearly defined, teams can act decisively rather than hesitating or overextending themselves. She also pointed to the value of structured process tools such as SIPOC, which help organisations visualise workflows, assign accountability, and close gaps before incidents recur.
According to Mary Stine, entering 2026 safely requires both structure and flexibility: “Clear objectives combined with adaptable execution allow teams to respond effectively when conditions change rapidly. Risk matrices enable faster, evidence-based decisions.”
“Even with limited resources, following the hierarchy of controls ensures the most effective protections are implemented first. Simultaneous-event drills where one team contains hazards while another performs extraction build readiness and confidence for real-world emergencies.”
Stine further explained that training must reflect real conditions, stating that organisations should prepare teams for layered emergencies where multiple hazards exist simultaneously. As organisations enter 2026, the lesson from 2025 is clear: safety cannot be static. Traditional compliance-based approaches are insufficient for a world of overlapping hazards, digital dependence, climate uncertainty, and workforce strain.
