Larry Wilson is a pioneer in the area of Human Factors in safety. He has been a human factors safety expert for over 30 years and has worked on-site with hundreds of companies worldwide. He is the author of SafaeStart and has also written and produced other safety solutions such as SafeTrack, Rate Your State, BooBooBandits, and HeadStartPro. Larry co-authored the book “Inside Out: Rethinking Traditional Safety Management Paradigms” and authored the book “Defenseless Moments: A Different Perspective on Serious Injuries”. He was the moderator and creator of the SafeConnection Expert Panel Webinars, which became the 3rd book, “The Best vs.The Worst - The world’s leading experts tackle the worst and most persistent safety problems…”. More recently, Larry launched his fourth book, "25 Years of Original Thought: Innovations in Safety, Human Error and Performance," a collection of some of his best articles published in different magazines worldwide.
He is also one of the most active keynote speakers at health and safety conferences around the globe.
This article looks at the traditional perspectives relating to risk and the hierarchy of control. It addresses,how through understanding better the nature of a human being’s reflexes, what enhances and impairs itand why the traditional “last-line-of-defence” is that very reflex action rather than Personal ProtectiveEquipment (PPE) which is actually the “last-line-of-protection”. Building also on many years of practicaland action-based research and working with many organizations around the world, the authors explainhow working on developing and preparing workers to be more aware of their...
It started with having to go back and capitalize Irony and Agony, as if I don’t know that the key words in a title need to be capitalized. That’s just two of the many errors made so far today. And today, even though I’m flying to Latin America, has not been a bad day, in terms of making more mistakes than normal (travel days are usually worse for me). But how many mistakes a day is normal? How many do you think you make per day? How many do you think most people make? And then, what about when it is, “one of those days…”, how many mistakes do you make then?
Well, the research says...
My father took me down to the river. We got out of the car. There were small rapids in this section. He asked me, “which way is the water flowing”? I just looked at him, and then he said, “well… that’s all you really need to know about managing sales people”. In an instant I got it, but he continued. “Just like the water they find the path of least resistance, so whenever you feel like you’re pushing water uphill: stop-think- and do something else. Because all that will happen is you’ll get exhausted-and frustrated”. Then we got into the car and drove back to the office. In less than a...
The idea or concept that human error is not a cause but it’s a consequence is, in many people’s estimation, a true statement. But to then go one step further and say that the cause is always the system is very misleading. This is not to underestimate the importance of a “well-designed” system, nor is it to diminish the importance of continually trying to improve the system to reduce human error or to decrease any efforts to compensate for human error, such as a seat belt, a fall arrest harness, etc. But rather, to emphasize that to default solely to the system is only partially true or...
The conventional view is that pressure to produce within a limited time frame causes an increase in the number and severity of unintentional injuries and incidents. And if your viewpoint is from around 10,000 meters, it certainly appears valid. Plus, if you’re looking for statistics to back up this simple theory, there are plenty to choose from.
So that’s all most people need: a plausible theory and a few statistics and they’re good to go in terms of never really questioning it after that.
However, this theory doesn’t account for the fact that none of us are ever trying to get hurt...
Of course, we’re not talking about your training sessions. And we’re not talking about mine either. It’s those other guys—their safety training sessions that we’re talking about…
But, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, those other guys have been busy. They must have managed to do a safety training session for almost everybody on the planet and they must’ve managed to do a pretty bad job of it too, because why else would everybody (or pretty much everybody) always try to get out of safety training whenever they can? This is especially interesting or ironic when you consider that...
People get hurt on a fairly regular basis. And we’ve been doing it all of our lives. Young children get hurt 15 to 25 times per week. That’s 5,000 injuries you can barely remember. Many of them were minimal, to be sure. Unfortunately, some were a bit more serious, where a kiss and a Band – Aid® weren’t enough.
Children ages 5 to 12 don’t get hurt quite as often – maybe only 2 to 4 times per week.
That’s still another 1,000 injuries or so.
As kids grow older, the injuries continue.
So, before high school is over, most people have already experienced 6,000 –...
“That’s exactly what happened to me,” he said, “I was hiking “ in the badlands of North Dakota.”
“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 ropes. But along the way, I saw a number of signs that warned people to ‘stay on the trail’. I just assumed they were for inexperienced hikers who would likely get lost and wouldn’t be able to find their way back onto the trail. It didn’t occur to...
“Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of us manage to pick ourselves up and hurry along as if nothing ever happened.”
Winston Churchill
He definitely had a lot of good quotes (unless you were Lady Astor) but this is certainly my favorite, and in terms of the title: Slips, Trips and Falls—Paradigm Shift, so very appropriate, because when you’re done reading this, 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...
Many companies organise training sessions on human factors, but what do they really gain from them?
This is a brief summary of a chat I had with a corporate safety director from a multinational pharmaceutical company (with 7,000 employees).
“Yes, of course we also cover that,” he said while we were rushing through a convention centre. “We provide several training sessions on human factors.” “
So, what do you teach your employees?” I asked.
“Well, we talk about the problems caused by rushing, fatigue, stress and those types of things, you know,” he said. “
And do you tell...
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