Lately there has been more articles, blogs, and other communications touting risk based safety management techniques. This author has even contributed to this up tick. What is also evident to me is that many times we are unclear what we mean by risk based. If the message is to be clearly communicated and if we want to set clear expectations, we should be more specific in what we mean by risk.
Risk refers to an outcomes uncertainty. In the purest sense risk can have one of three outcomes they are; loss, no loss, or a gain. Risk is also subjective and is based on one's own perceptions and experience. This combination of the definition of risk combined with perceptions is where, I believe, we as safety professionals need to be more specific. When addressing risk be more specific and refer to it as hazard risk. For a hazard risk only has two outcomes; loss or no loss. By being more specific we eliminate much of the subjectivity and the idea that a short cut will elicit a gain.
