Human Factors and Performance: Reducing Errors and Improving Safety

Abstract
While companies employ a variety of tactics to reduce workplace incidents, behavioral-based programs have proven highly effective—particularly because such programs ensure that safety becomes a collective responsibility shared by all employees. However, training managers and their employees on the fundamentals of behavior-based programs such as the Siemens Energy Human Performance (HuP) program has proven challenging during the global COVID-19 pandemic. Training that traditionally was done in person, where people could interact and discuss root causes of accidents in the same room, had to be replaced with virtual training sessions. This paper reviews the key facets of the HuP program, which includes safety training, raising awareness of employees’ susceptibility to human error, and how to design management systems as well as to promote behaviors to prevent safety incidents. It also reviews common practices in the program—including Stop Work authority, Safety Walk & Talks, daily toolboxes, and rapid risk assessment—and how they are being consolidated into one virtual training curriculum. People bring their own personal mix of skills, knowledge, experience, attitudes, motivation, habits, and personality to their jobs—and to each task that they routinely perform. The novelty of the HuP approach is that it empowers workers to recognize where errors occur, use the proper tools to change their habits, and then contribute equally to their own safety and operational excellence, rather than relying on written policies and discipline. The efforts focus on safety within and outside the company.