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Home » Topics » Human & Organizational Performance
Human and Organizational Performance (HOP) assumes that human error is inevitable and that error is a symptom of problems within organizational systems. The HOP approach emphasizes the use of leading indicators, lessens negative consequences that lead to underreporting of incidents and near misses and includes workers in identifying safety solutions.
Expenses are an unavoidable reality and the cost of doing business. The trick is to pick the right things to spend money on, to maximize revenue and minimize cost. In the post-COVID era absenteeism has skyrocketed in many industries, becoming a key focus for executives who want to bring down costs.
Behavioral safety has had a significant impact on making the American workplace safer in recent years. Observing behaviors can help to identify unsafe acts and conditions and provide a tool to help correct both.
To improve their safety, outcomes some organizations advocate "everyone is responsible for safety." The thinking behind this is that it will create a universal mindset in their workforce to actively engage everyone. The fundamental problem with this thinking is that it is not practical to hold a group accountable for individual behavior.
Within risk management constructs, external risk is as equally valid as internal risk. Natural disasters, external hazardous materials releases, and workplace violence from outside the organization can harm employees and affect organizational operations as much or more than inter-workplace hazards.
Preventable injuries culminate from a series of sequential events, as represented by five dominos. The first represents the task or situation, followed by some faulty worker decision, resulting in the unsafe action, which leads to an accident and the inevitable injury. By tipping the first domino all tend to fall, and by removing some of the intervening domino the accident can be eliminated. Hence the belief that workers decisions or actions are the primary cause of accidents.
We are often asked about what advice we would have for other women in manufacturing. At first, it was a difficult question for us to answer because we did not particularly focus on being women – we just were people working hard at doing the jobs we were engaged in.
As expert panels around the world got together to discuss what they think are reliable leading indicators, an unexpected result surfaced during the discussions.
There are many parallels between exceptional safety leadership and sports. It takes proper planning and execution to be a consistent winner. Great leadership is great leadership, regardless of the context. Here are some lessons learned from the sports world to improve your own safety leadership.
Whatever your reason for pursuing better career opportunities, you need to present yourself as a good investment. There are various ways you can approach this, but one of the most effective is by leaning into safety skills. It doesn't matter what area of industrial operations you want to work in. A background in safety can be instrumental in pushing you above the competition.
Although workplace incident rates have steadily declined by 28% over the last decade, rates for serious injuries and fatalities (SIFs) have remained virtually unchanged.