What should your organisation be doing?

Would HSE performance improve if your organisation gave explicit consideration to human factors?

One way to determine whether human factor issues should be addressed directly is by assessing the HSE culture of your organisation.

Alternatively, benchmarking the performance of your organisation against others can indicate where there is room for improvement.

Incident investigations also provide another good source of data. Properly performed, they can give clear insight into potential problem areas related to human factors. Similarly, diagnosing known problem areas provides valuable information for directing future improvements.

Leadership and commitment

HSE culture is largely determined by the management’s leadership and commitment. Change for the better will not happen without these factors (see case study Developing a leader accountabilities agreement).

Assessing HSE culture

Culture has a major impact on personal HSE behaviours. The simplest way to evaluate your organisation’s HSE culture is to discuss it with both management and workforce. Gauge their perceptions by using a recognised tool such as the five step HSE Culture Ladder. The HSE Culture Ladder allows an organisation (or a part of an organisation) to determine where it sits on a scale of improving HSE culture. One extreme (pathological) displays a failure and lack of willingness to recognise and/or address those issues which may result in poor safety performance. At the other extreme (generative) safe working practices are viewed as a necessary and desirable part of any operation. Descriptions of 20 critical HSE elements and the definitions of actions and behaviours at each level can be found on the OGP Human Factors website (http://info.ogp.org.uk/hf). The challenge for each organisation is to recognise its own safety culture and identify how it may be improved. Surveying the workforce is an effective way to gather the data needed for assessment. Consider using one of the many organisations accustomed to undertaking this complex research to assist in conducting the effort. There are two videos available on this subject - Safety Ladder Culture - What is an HSE culture? and Generative Organisations - both videos are zipped Flash .exe files.

Identifying problem areas

Several techniques can indicate potential human factors related problems. These vary from specific surveys–such as procedure violations, ergonomic problems, stress reviews–to more general surveys covering a number of issues. Some surveys will lead to improvement actions. Others confine themselves to diagnosis.

Survey tools provide a good way to identify potential areas for improvement, particularly for organisations in which there is little feedback from incidents. However, they are not in themselves immediate solutions for addressing change.

Benchmarking

Benchmarking HSE performance can provide valuable insights. This type of benchmarking can be done at the local level by comparing one installation with another. At a higher level, an organisation may compare its overall HSE performance with that of others.

There are many different types of benchmarking exercises. Safety performance data presented in the OGP report Safety Performance of the Global E&P Industry is an example of an industry-wide benchmarking excercise. At a more detailed level, you can compare the performance of individual organisations on specific tasks.

Incident investigation

Analysing the root causes of incidents (and near misses) provides a unique opportunity to gain an important insight into safety culture and identify possible problem areas.

Incident analyses generally establish the sequence of events and the primary causes. For example, the outcome of an incident investigation may be “…the incident resulted from a worker failing to secure the drill pipe in accordance with company policy”.

Your ‘solution’ may be to improve the quality of supervision for this particular type of operation. However, taking human factors into account, you may learn more by determining why the worker failed to recognise, or chose to ignore, the risk at hand. For example, is there a local company culture which promotes task completion ahead of operational safety?

A range of tools can help in structuring incident investigations to ensure that root causes are uncovered. Examples of incident investigations include TapRooT®, Tripod Beta®, Why Tree Analysis, SCAT, etc.

Well run organisations can operate for many years without a major incident. That is why it is essential to share the learnings from each incident analysis as widely as possible.

How are improvements made?

Improvements in HSE performance occur when people, culture, working environment, management systems and facilities/equipment are managed effectively together. The steps to improvement are no different from those employed within any change management system. It is important that account is taken of the human factor issues associated with implementing any change. Two issues of particular importance are management leadership and readiness for change. Those individuals with key responsibilities for implementing any change should receive training in human factor fundamentals and tools. The implications of implementing a new system of work must be recognised and accepted by both the management and the workforce. There is no use telling a worker to spend more time assessing the risks associated with a particular task if the management does not make more time available, and the worker does not recognise the benefits that should result.

Planning for change

Before implementing a human factors change initiative, it is important to determine the organisation’s readiness for change.

In general, there are five stages: pre-contemplative, contemplative, preparation, action & maintenance.

Associated with each stage are certain actions that are essential to secure the proposed change. For example, if an organisation falls into the pre-contemplative category, then the strategy for change must include raising awareness of the need and benefits which will result from the change.

Initiative overload, the perception that too much is happening too soon, should be avoided. A key to success is “integrating” human factors into existing systems and processes, not trying to work it as a stand-alone independent effort.

Provide appropriate communication and training to the parties who will be implementing the change, and to those who will be affected by it.