Safety incentive programs found to compromise safety performance

This may interest you. A paper from Jimmie Hinze, Matthew Hallowell and Kevin Bauds looked at the evidence behind a range of safety strategies and supplemented this with an expert panel. Lots to unpack in this paper, so I’ll cover that in a future summary, but one thing of interest was around the use of…

Managing systems & documents rather than issues and risks

Finishing up writing a couple of papers and thought these references may be of interest. The first image is taken from Peter Ladkin’s re-evaluation of Andrew Hopkin’s analysis of the 1999 Glenbrook rail accident (source below). Hopkins and the official investigation revealed some interesting facets of rule following – the governing system was complex, voluminous,…

Are you sure you want me to follow this? A study of procedure management, user perceptions and compliance behaviour

This study explored how worker perceptions of positive and negative procedure attributes were linked to procedure compliance, and the influence of management approaches to procedures. Data came from 176 maintainers in the mining industry. For background: ·        They briefly cover the model 1 and model 2 thinking of procedures (which notably are more complimentary than confrontational).…

Zigging when you should have zagged: the clarity of hindsight

A month ago Abhijith Balakrishnan posted an apt quote (link below) about the tensions workers face between being thorough versus efficient in the moment (which Hollnagel coined as ETTO); often known only in hindsight which was more appropriate. This reminded me of a few references in Perrow’s seminal Normal Accidents book, where he nicely referred…

The role of safety climate and communication in accident interpretation: Implications for learning from negative events

This 1998 paper explored how safety climate and communication—organisational factors—influence the interpretation of accident contributing factors/causes. Accident vignettes were used in two different settings. Vignettes were manipulated to have either internal cues (clues/factors pointing to a worker as the main contributor/cause of an accident) and external cues (factors outside of the worker’s control). Providing background,…

Safety investigations and political sensemaking

What-you-look-for-is-what-you-find. In other words, if you go into something expecting to find error, non-compliance, management or design issues, you will likely find them (see Friday’s post, linked in comments). As Scott Snook put it regarding the accidental shootdown of two friendly US Blackhawk helicopters in 1994, “the more expected an event, the more easily it…

What you find is not always what you fix—How other aspects than causes of accidents decide recommendations for remedial actions

By interviewing 22 accident investigators, they studied constraints that lead investigations away from the “ideal” assumption that “what-you-find-is-what-you-fix” (WYFIWYF). That is, how does the same organisational context contributing to accidents constrain the investigation methods and understanding? Results Investigators believed that their investigations followed the ideal WYFIWYF; however data suggested that the analysis & design of…

Application of Human Factors Analysis and Classification System (HFACS) to UK rail safety of the line incidents

Another study exploring rail safety events using HFACS. This evaluated 78 reports across 5 different types of incident. All the usual caveats and limitations exist with evaluating and categorising incident reports. It does provide interesting insights on how rail investigators think about performance and contributing factors, though. The HFACS model is shown below: Results Some…

Shift Work and Sleep Disturbance in the Oil Industry

This studied sleep duration, sleep quality and a range of other sleep factors related to rotating shift workers in the US oil industry (n = 351). All data was via survey (including sleep logs), so note that limitation. Providing background, it’s noted: ·        Since the 90s, most refineries in the US have been staffed via two…

Failing to Fix What is Found: Risk Accommodation in the Oil and Gas Industry

This study explores several research questions around how well companies in oil & gas (pipeline companies specifically) find and fix issues when they occur, and what factors may contribute to workplaces that consistently fail to find and fix issues (risk accommodation). Incident data from 34 companies over 12 months was included. Results: Of the 2,552…