I post a lot about Human Factors (HF) and Human and Organizational Performance (HOP/HOF), and I get a lot of calls, emails, and texts every week asking more about these topics.
But understand HF and HOP are simply approaches to managing safety and health. They must never be viewed as a “silver bullet” to fix all our problems with safety performance and/or cultural issues.
I have a series of articles explaining how HF and HOP can improve many of the elements found in most recognized SMS models. Several just of how these approaches can improve our Incident Investigation, Causal Analysis, and Corrective Action Plan efforts. As well as how they can aid us in our approach to auditing our SMS elements and analyzing our opportunities to improve the SMS.
Embracing the HF and HOP approaches to managing safety and health will shift the focus away from looking only at the behaviors of those involved in the events (an incident or a bad field audit) and begin to look at the LATENT ORGANIZATIONAL FAILURES that drive those behaviors leading to the issues identified in the incident or field audit.
It may be true that 85% of accidents involve human behavior(s), but identifying those unsafe/undesired behaviors is the starting point, not the answer! Understanding WHY those behaviors occurred is where we need to be going. HF and HOP can provide the framework that will transition us from the old BBS mindset to one that understands humans make mistakes – how we lessen these mistakes through workplace and job task designs using our Hierarchy of Controls is a really fun way to invigorate safety in a workplace.
