Friday, December 01, 2006

As well as a realistic perception of risk, people need to be motivated to work safely. In general terms people at work are motivated by:

* Skill variety – not having to do the same thing all day every day;
* Task significance – feeling their job is making a difference;
* Task identity – understanding how their contribution fits in to the bigger picture;
* Autonomy – having some control over how they do their task;
* Task feedback – getting information that they are doing their job well.

These can present a challenge to health and safety. In particular, the desire for variety and autonomy can lead to people deviating from laid down procedures. Also, if people do not perceive the risks to be high, some of the activities they do for safety can seem to have little significance.

Risk perceptions

One reason why people fail to pay sufficient attention to what they are doing or choose to either not read a procedure or to knowingly violate it is because their perception of the risk is less than reality (i.e. they think they are safer than they really are). Equally there are many high profile cases where people perceive the risk of something to be higher than is probably is (e.g. nuclear power, travelling by train in the days after an accident).

The reality is that people are pretty poor at evaluating risks. Lack of knowledge clearly has an influence, but there are greater powers at work. Complacency is one of these, and is a natural reaction when people become familiar with a hazard so that they can almost forget it exists. Also, people seem to make an automatic evaluation of risks vs. benefits, and will instinctively accept a risk where they feel the benefit is worthwhile. Road travel is a good example. People are happy to continue this activity even though an average of 10 people die per day on UK roads, but would not accept anything like this risk from any work setting.

The challenge for health and safety is to get people having a realistic perception of risks. We want to understand there are reasons for controls, but we do not want them to become overly risk averse as this can stifle the business and stops people actually engaging with the risk management process. Getting this level of understanding is not easy, and will require continuous attention. As with many things, communication is the key and will involve finding ways informing people about risks in a way they will understand.

Communications errors

Error is a natural part of human communication. It occurs when someone understands a message differently than the sender of that message intends. It is largely related to ambiguity in language, but also due to individuals having a different understanding of the subject. Errors are particularly common when one person is much more knowledgeable than another (i.e. experienced person talking to a trainee).

One-to-one face-to-face communication is usually most reliable because people have an opportunity to discuss the message so that both parties can be sure it has been understood properly. Of course that requires the people to choose to discuss. Other forms of communication including remotely (i.e. by telephone or radio) and written usually cause more errors.

Types of human error

There are many different types of error, but most fall into the following categories:

* Omitting an action;
* Doing the wrong action;
* Doing the right action on the wrong object;
* Doing the action to soon or late;
* Doing the action too quickly or slowly.

This list can be used during risk assessments to consider the potential consequences of different types of error.

Human error

Studies suggest that up to 80% of accident causes are contributed to some form of human failure. These failures are either people

* Meaning to do the right thing but making a slip or lapse of attention and ending up getting wrong;
* Thinking they are doing the right thing, doing it perfectly but it turns out they made the wrong decision or selection at the start;
* Choosing to do the wrong thing by violating a rule or procedure.

The important thing to realise that human failures are not random events and are actually caused. This means they can be predicted and their likelihood reduced. HSE guidance document HSG48 shows that the causes fall into three main categories:

* Job factors - illogical design of equipment, disturbances and interruptions, poor instructions, poorly maintained equipment, high workload and unpleasant working conditions;
* Individual factors - low skill and competence levels, tired staff, bored or disheartened staff or individual medical problems;
* Organisational and management factors - poor work planning, leading to high work pressure, lack of safety systems and barriers, inadequate responses to previous incidents, management based on one-way communications, poor health and safety culture.

Understanding the root causes of human failures and general performance problems is essential if effective solutions are to be developed.