Articles

Human Nature, Human Error and the System

This personal anecdote highlights the valuable lesson the Larry’s father taught about managing salespeople by using a simple analogy of water flowing in a river. The analogy emphasizes the importance of finding the path of least resistance and avoiding exhaustion and frustration. The author shares…

Human Error is not a Cause – It’s a Consequence

The text challenges the notion that human error is solely a consequence of system failures, arguing that it is misleading to place the entire blame on the system. While acknowledging the importance of well-designed systems and continuous improvement to minimize human error, the author suggests…

Work load, Time pressure and Safety – A Different Perspective

The text argues that the conventional belief that pressure to produce within a limited time frame leads to more unintentional injuries and incidents is supported by statistics. However, it fails to consider that nobody intentionally wants to get hurt and doesn’t address the underlying reasons…

Why Nobody Likes Safety Training

Most people are not interested at all in safety training. They think it is another mandatory boring training session that they won’t see anything new. That said, it’s not easy to get people fired up about safety if the statistical likelihood that they’ll ever experience…

Did You Hurt Yourself More When You Were Younger?

As you grew older, would the cause of an injury be that different from a child’s or a teenager’s injury? How often would it be because: “I didn’t see it,” or “I wasn’t thinking about it,”? This quick read goes through the various sources of…

Rethink risk assessment. Adding the third dimension.

Safe Home Office

2020 was a year like no other, with COVID 19 presenting challenges like never before. Life as we knew it changed overnight, with restrictions placed on all elements of life as we knew it. Up to 40% of workers in Europe worked from home fulltime…

Defenseless Moments

“Well,” I said, “that sounds somewhat dangerous.” “But I’ve done lots of long hikes on mountain crests and other world famous trails. So yeah, it was in the badlands but this trail was no big deal. It wasn’t technical, as they say. I didn’t need…

COVID-19 – The Personal Battle with Critical Errors and Complacency Drift

Anthony walked back to his office and put the large print down on his desk. It was only then that it hit him and he realised what he had done. Three quick thoughts flashed through his mind in seconds. And why couldn’t he have thought…

Slips, Trips and Falls: Paradigm Shift

When it comes to slips, trips and falls, what is really more important: what you stumble on or the hurrying? How many times have you slipped, tripped or fell because you were rushing? Can you even begin to count? When you’re done reading this article, hopefully you won’t just hurry along as if nothing ever happened. And hopefully this will be because of some significant paradigm shifts, which will give you a different perspective—and hence, a different set of tools to help prevent slips, trips and falls—significantly.

Safety and Industry 4.0

Industry 4.0 is more than a corporate buzz phrase: Instead, its impacts will be huge. But what will they look like in terms of safety? Will accidents be finally eliminated? Will we be immune to making errors? What’s the role of human factors in all that?

Safety Culture and Organisational Change

Need to transform Organisational and Safety Culture where you are? Put aside culture and make change your explicit goal. We set out the elements of an effective plan for change and describe the pitfalls you can avoid along the way.

The Human Factors

Companies can repeatedly display safety charts, write policies, and conduct seminars on risk, but come what may, will be unable to dictate a key contingency in safety at work: human behaviour. This piece digs in to human factors including particular features of the individual mindset, organisational elements and behavioural patterns.

Complacency: the Silent Killer

To combat complacency, one has to take the active step of understanding a given task’s context in terms of risk and hazard. Complacency should never be disrespected, but certainly must not be capitulated to: one has to cultivate positive habits and skills, as well as educating one’s team in how complacency can undermine sound decision-making.

Unlocking the Code to Human Error

The name of this essay was prompted by a remark made by the Director of Training and Development of a large construction firm in the course of a discussion with Larry Wilson, Chief Visionary Officer of SafeStart: “Larry,” he observed, “you have unlocked the code to human error”.