EHS Unplugged: Coin Flips & EHS Risk

VelocityEHS talks what a coin flip and EHS risks have in common.

Video Transcript

What do coin flips have to do with EHS risks? Suppose that I were to flip to this coin three times, and I got three heads in a row. That doesn’t mean that the chances of getting a heads are one hundred percent. That just means that we haven’t had enough flips and enough time to see the real probability play itself out.

Now let’s take it back to the world of EHS. Suppose that I’ve got two facilities, and over the course of a year, one of them has had zero incidents, and the other has had five. Does the one that has had zero incidents really have a zero percent chance of an incident happening? Probably not.

In fact, in my experience as a global EHS coordinator at a situation very similar to this, that facility that had zero incidents did a lot of catching up pretty fast. Absence of incidents does not imply absence of risk. The probability just hasn’t manifested yet. So, be proactive about looking for risks.

Don’t leave the safety of your workforce to chance.