While we believe the Job Hazard Analysis is crucial to the EHS process, its use can be only effective if the organization provides support for the process. Pause for a moment and list what you consider are the essential elements of an organization’s “safety culture”? Many EHS professionals might answer they would like their organization to be proactive in maintaining a safety process, keep risks low, maintain effective hazard controls that keep injuries, illnesses and loss producing events to a minimum. These are, however, the results of essential elements and not the foundational elements.
A considerable amount of research has gone into trying to answer the question, “Why do some organizations not have as many failures as others?” Answering this question requires an approach that must be wide ranging and take us well beyond simply following the “regs”.
In going through the US DOE “Human Performance Handbook”, in Chapter 5, a section entitled “High Reliability Organizations” has insights on the elements that we seek. The section provides a picture of the type of organization that mirrors what EHS professionals want.
If we look into the details provided in the Handbook, we find additional ways to assess our organization and a map we can use to better identify where it is on a reliability continuum. We can compare it to the characteristics of an “HRO”. How well does it stack up? Does it lean towards preventing incidents or is it more towards probable failures in its projects and endeavors?
HRO characteristics
Researchers considered the following in determining HRO characteristics:
Organization factors (How are rewards provided and how are systems developed that recognize the cost of failures and reliability)
Managerial factors (How does it communicate the “big picture” to its personnel?)
Adaptive factors (Is it a learning organizations that seeks out what it doesn’t know and adapts quickly to change?)
HROs are said to have 5 key characteristics:
· They have preoccupation with failure – any event is considered a symptom that something is wrong and they understand that small errors may combine into severe events.
· They have a reluctance to simply – They accept their environment as complex, unstable, unknowable and unpredictable and make use of all diverse experience.
· They have sensitivity to operations – They complete frequent assessments of the safety health of the organization – They actively look for “latent failures” (hidden organizational weaknesses or equipment flaws that lie dormant).
· They are committed to resilience - working to reduce errors and keep them small. They put a premium on experts, deep experience, special skills, and training.
· They have deference to expertise – decisional authority migrates to personnel with the most expertise regardless of level in the organization. Members of the organization know the “signs or symptoms” that indicate or signal when to switch into a different management mode.
From US Department of Energy Human Performance Improvement Handbook, Volume 1, pg 5-18
Questions to Consider
The following is adapted from the HPI Handbook. On a scale of 1 to 10, assess how well your organization compares to an HRO with 1 being “Needs Considerable Improvement” to 10 being “We’re an HRO!”:
1. We continually reinvent ourselves to remain successful – We learn quickly and efficiently and adapt rapidly to changes in conditions.
2. We allow decision-making to migrate down to the lowest level consistent with decision making. Those persons with best expertise/experience are called upon with limited restrictions.
3. Our components or systems operate together to produce risk enhancing or risk-mitigating outcomes. We work as a team, share information readily, allow those with training, information and expertise participate in problem solving and decisions.
4. We are committed to learning from everything we do. We learn from change and all loss events regardless of scope.
5. We actively and continually try to learn what we don’t know and work to communicate knowledge regarding problems quickly to everyone in the organization.
6. We avoid “organizational hubris”- Hubris means extreme haughtiness, pride or arrogance. Hubris often indicates a loss of contact with reality and an overestimation of one's own competence or capabilities, especially when the person exhibiting it is in a position of power. (Wikipedia)
7. We train personnel to recognize and respond to abnormalities – We seek out latent errors and hidden potential risks.
9. We empower and train personnel to take action to prevent errors – latent and/or active
10. We design redundant systems to catch problems early on
11. We do not punish people for making honest mistakes. We know people will make mistakes and are fallible.
12. We expect and understand that our systems may fail and prepare for the inevitable event to minimize the impact of failure. Our post-loss systems are comprehensive and current.
Summary
What we really seek is a High Reliability Organization. If we want our organizations to be proactive in maintaining a safety process, keep risks low, maintain effective hazard controls that keep injuries, illnesses and loss producing events to a minimum, we must work towards not just a traditional EHS process but find ways to move towards being an HRO.
How does your organization stack up?
References
US Department of Energy Human Performance Improvement Handbook, Volume 1, DOE-HDBK-1028-2009
Roughton, James, Crutchfield, Nathan; Job Hazard Analysis. A Guide to Compliance and Beyond, Butterworth-Heinemann, 2008
Roughton, James; Mercurio, James; Developing an Effective Safety Culture: A Leadership Approach, Butterworth-Heinemann, 2002
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_reliability_organization
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Thank you. I am the Senior Advisor for High Reliability for the U.S. Department of Energy and the senior author for the Human Performance Handbook. I’m pleased you find it infomative.
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