To address human factors in workplace safety settings, peoples’ capabilities and limitations must first be understood. The modern working environment is very different from the settings that humans have evolved to deal with. This section examines human characteristics that can lead to difficulties interacting with the working environment. The main factors involved include:
- Attention – the modern workplace can overload human attention with enormous amounts of information far over that’s encountered in the natural world.
- The way in which we learn information can help reduce demands on our attention, but can sometimes create further problems.
- The way in which we learn information can help reduce demands on our attention, but can sometimes create further problems.
- Perception – in order to interact safely with the world, we must correctly perceive it and the dangers it holds.
- Work environments often challenge human perception systems and information can be misinterpreted.
- Work environments often challenge human perception systems and information can be misinterpreted.
- Memory – our capacity for remembering things and the methods we impose upon ourselves to access information often put undue pressure on us.
- Increasing knowledge about a subject or process allows us to retain more information relating to it.
- Increasing knowledge about a subject or process allows us to retain more information relating to it.
- Logical reasoning – failures in reasoning and decision-making can have severe implications for complex systems, such as chemical plants, and for tasks like maintenance and planning.
Here is a detailed explanation of these four (4) main factors in human factors engineering.