Safety Labs by Safety Products Global Making Sense of Evolving Safety Approaches with Leslie Rex Stockel
Jan 5, 2026
Leslie Rex Stockel, Associate Professor of Fire Protection and Safety Engineering Technology at Oklahoma State University, brings decades of safety education and leadership. She traces safety thinking from early management theories through Heinrich, behavior-based safety, and human performance. Leslie warns against chasing silver bullets, stresses balancing technical and cultural safety, and urges steady, practical improvement.
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Heinrich Foreshadowed Behavior Focus
- Heinrich emphasized unsafe acts over conditions in his causation numbers, foreshadowing behavior-based approaches.
- His framing influenced decades of behavior-focused programs even as incident attribution evolved to systems thinking.
Why Safety Methods Keep Changing
- Safety ideas cycle with management trends: Heinrich to behavior-based safety to human performance.
- New methods often become 'silver bullets' but fail because organizations switch before full implementation and culture change takes many years.
The Two Realms Of Safety Practice
- Safety has two complementary realms: technical (hands and feet) and cultural (hearts and minds).
- Technical tasks include LOTO, confined space procedures, permits and PPE; cultural work builds buy-in, trust, and psychological safety.