Safety Culture Change THROUGH Human Error Prevention
Why SafeStart Works |
SafeStart works because it makes people realise that more of their safety is under their control than they had ever thought. Before SafeStart, most people perceive that incidents and injuries are usually caused by equipment failure or some action by other people. The first thing that SafeStart does is to shift this mindset, to show that most incidents (85-95%) are either caused by ourselves, or are at least preventable by our actions. We show that the overwhelming majority of incidents are in fact caused by people making the same four critical errors, because they are in one or more of the same four states. These 'state to error' patterns are repeated time and time again, forming the core of our at risk behaviour. Armed with this new insight, SafeStart then focuses on techniques to help people become aware of the four states, and to avoid making the critical errors. Repetition, reinforcement, multimedia, group activities, story telling, real time learning assessment all help to ingrain the practices and create new skills and improve habits. The ultimate objective is not just to impart knowledge, but to be able to use these techniques in the real world when needed. In other words, they avoid making critical errors without even thinking about it.  An Avoidable AccidentA female employee of a client had worked in a facility for more than 35 years, doing the same job on the same machine. One day the woman turned around without looking and walked straight into a bulkhead that had been there since before she started. She was pretty badly hurt. When they came to do the incident investigation, they considered protecting people by putting bubble wrap around the bulkheads. When they started thinking about it more, they figured there were lots of things people could bump into. They were heading down the path that maybe they needed to bubble wrap every employee instead. Once they realised that, they started talking about unintentional and habitual at-risk behaviour, and that’s how SafeStart got involved.  |
