How Energy-Based Safety Can Help You Operationalize HOP

6 minute read

I spent years in the field as an EHS practitioner trying to close the gap between two realities: the safety program we built and the work that actually happened.

Two frameworks have shaped how I think about that gap more than any others:

1. Human and Organizational Performance (HOP), and
2. Energy-Based Safety (EBS).

On the surface, they can feel like entirely separate conversations. One is a philosophy. The other is a science. But when you put them together, something powerful happens.

A quick look at HOP

HOP is an operating philosophy that recognizes human error as a normal, and inevitable part of work. It challenges organizations to stop viewing mistakes as character flaws, and start examining the systems and conditions that set workers up to fail.

At the heart of HOP is the understanding that workers are constantly adapting to work environments. Workers are always trying to find ways to get the job done despite imperfect instructions, tools, and environments.

HOP asks leaders to shift their response to failure from blame and punishment toward curiosity and learning. The core principles of HOP are as follows:

• People make mistakes
  
• Blame fixes nothing
  
• Context drives behavior
  
• Learning is vital
  
• Response matters

HOP has given the EHS profession a new lens for understanding why work unfolds the way it does. But for many organizations, the challenge isn’t only understanding the philosophy, it’s knowing where to start applying it in the field.

Related article: The 5 Basic Principles of HOP (Human and Organizational Performance)

A quick look at Energy-Based Safety

Energy-Based Safety operates from a different starting point and is built off three core principles:

• Energy causes harm
  
• More energy causes more harm, and
  
• Controls save lives.

EBS holds that the severity of any workplace injury is directly tied to the magnitude of physical energy involved in a hazardous event.

Research has demonstrated that hazards exceeding 1,500 joules of physical energy (i.e. falls from > 4ft, excavations > 5ft, arc flashes, etc.) are the exposures most likely to result in a serious injury or fatality (SIF/pSIF).

There are two practical tools have emerged from EBS thinking.

1. The High Energy Control Assessment (HECA)

HECA is a field monitoring method that measures whether direct controls are present for high-energy hazards during active work.

2. The Safety Classification and Learning (SCL) Model

The SCL Model is a rule-based framework for classifying lagging indicators (incidents) and leading indicators (energy-based observations) through a common structure.

This allows organizations to consistently classify events across the management system in order to identify and prioritize learning opportunities that may have previously fallen though the cracks.

Related article: Energy-Based Safety: A New Approach to Preventing Serious Injuries and Fatalities

Where Energy-Based Safety and HOP differ

HOP and EBS come from different disciplines and speak different languages.

• HOP draws from organizational psychology and human factors engineering. It is fundamentally about people and how context shapes decisions and how organizations create the conditions for success or failure.

• EBS draws from physics and engineering. It is fundamentally about hazards, specifically, identifying and controlling the ones that are most likely to kill or seriously injure someone.

HOP resists overly prescriptive tools because it recognizes that context is always changing. EBS, by contrast, thrives on precise, consistent definitions. At a high-level HOP asks, “how did this happen?” EBS asks “was the energy controlled?”.

Where HOP and EBS converge

Despite these differences, HOP and EBS share a foundational belief: the absence of injury does not mean the presence of safety.

• Both reject the idea that a low injury rate tells you anything meaningful about the real risk workers face every day.
  
• Both are deeply focused on serious injury and fatality prevention.
  
• And critically, both recognize that traditional safety metrics like TRIR are inadequate proxies for health and safety performance.
  
• Perhaps most importantly, both frameworks insist that controls must be designed to work even when humans make mistakes.

A core principle of HOP is that error is inevitable, which means systems must be error-tolerant. EBS operationalizes that exact principle. A “direct control”, as defined by EBS, only qualifies as such if it remains effective even when a worker makes an unintentional error during the task.

Using EBS to operationalize HOP

One of the most common challenges EHS professionals face when beginning their HOP journey is the question: What does HOP actually look like in the field? The ideas resonates but translating it into day-to-day practice is harder.

HECA and the SCL model offer a concrete entry point

When leaders conduct HECA observations, they aren’t just checking boxes, they’re doing exactly what HOP advocates for: going to the field to understand how work is actually being done.

The structure of HECA creates a natural opening for the kind of humble inquiry that HOP encourages. Rather than arriving with a clipboard to catch violations, leaders arrive with a question: Are the most serious hazards adequately controlled, and what does the work really look like today?

The SCL model extends this further by giving teams a shared vocabulary to classify and discuss events consistently.

HOP emphasizes that improvement comes through learning and learning requires a common language. The SCL Model replaces vague, subjective judgment calls about what constitutes a “SIF or pSIF” with an objective, rule-based process. That consistency makes organizational-level learning possible in a way that gut-feel classification never could.

Together, HECA and the SCL Model give EHS practitioners a structured way to practice HOP principles without losing sight of the work in front of them.

Conclusion

HOP has shifted how many of us think about safety. EBS gives us tools to act on that thinking in a way that is measurable, repeatable, and field-ready.

If your organization has embraced the HOP philosophy but is struggling to make it tangible, Energy-Based Safety methodologies may be the bridge you’ve been looking for. Not as a replacement for the philosophy, but as its operational backbone.

References

National Safety Council. (2021). Human & organizational performance: A path to improvement for all organizations. National Safety Council. https://www.nsc.org

Oguz Erkal, E. D., & Hallowell, M. R. (2023). Moving beyond TRIR: Measuring and monitoring safety performance with high-energy control assessments. Professional Safety, 68(5), 26–35. https://www.assp.org

Hallowell, M. R., & Spencer, C. (2024). Safety classification and learning model: Defining and classifying potential serious injuries and fatalities. Professional Safety, 69(2), 18–26. https://www.assp.org