It has become fashionable to claim that human error is implicated in 80-90 percent of all major accidents. While probably close to the truth, this statement adds very little to our understanding of how and why organizational accidents happen. In the first place, it could hardly be otherwise, given the range of human involvement in […]
I have seen some toxic workplaces. Lessons learned: When things go bad, good people leave, eventually followed by people who thought they could change things but got buried because too many good people left. Those left are toxic people or hostages to their job (usually by their years of service and how much $ they
15 human error thoughts we need to consider during our next incident investigation and causal analysis:
It is difficult for engineers to change human nature and therefore, instead of trying to persuade people not to make errors, we should accept people as we find them and try to remove opportunities for error by changing the work situation — that is, the plant or equipment design or the method of working. Alternatively,
If we want to understand why the activity of operators has a particular characteristic, it is often necessary to look for reasons other than those that are immediately visible. The operator working on an aspect of the process is placed in a working environment that will play a part in determining his/her activity and, therefore,
To say that accidents are due to human failure is not so much untrue as unhelpful for three reasons: Every accident is due to human error: someone, usually a manager, has to decide what to do; someone, usually a designer, has to decide how to do it; someone, usually an operator, has to do it.
Several organizational characteristics can feed organizational silence: Managerial illusions: managers can believe that the situation is under control simply because of the number of procedures. They can also believe that failure to follow a procedure is the only possible mechanism that can produce accidents. This discourages feedback about situations where procedures are difficult, time-consuming, or
Yesterday, my post regarding the role of Artificial Intelligence (AI) stirred a lot of private comments among many of you. It was nice to see we can at least agree on our roles as safety pros and leaders. But I was reminded of a group discussion with many of those same safety pros years ago
For all of the AI lovers, remember this: AI can NOT walk a mile in anyone’s shoes AI does NOT have empathy AI can NOT coach a worker in need of a safety moment AI does NOT answer the phone 24/7 when it is needed So if a safety pro is afraid of AI replacing
COMPREHENSIVE HAZARD IDENTIFICATION is key to effective risk management. The RISK arising from a HAZARD that has not been identified cannot be managed.
“…if you do not manage human error, human error will manage the organization, always at great cost and often at great danger.” James Reason – Video Series, Managing Human Error
The appreciation that a person makes of the situation depends mainly on the following four elements: the nature of the information available personal experience, which results in personalized mental models, and a library of configurations that the brain recognizes. the purpose of his current work: if the operator is focused on the resolution of an
