Closing the Gap in Human Factors Everybody Has a Role To Play

Abstract

Human factors is a broad technical discipline focused on enhancing people’s performance in complex organizations where people interact with equipment and processes over time and across levels of hierarchy. Despite this relatively clear definition, human factors is still poorly understand and doesn’t yet yield the full potential that the practical insights and actions can produce. Despite a substantial effort on the part of many industry bodies, including the UK Energy Institute (EI) and the International Oil and Gas Producers Association (IOGP), to raise awareness of human-factors principles, with some exceptions in a few organizations, progress on implementation has been slow. Momentum is now finally building with the formation of the Human Performance Oil and Gas Group (HPOG), which is designed to be an industry membership organization modeled on the highly successful Dropped Objects Prevention Safety initiative, DROPS. Its purpose is to embed human factors concepts into practical organizational processes and operational procedures. There is a common misconception that human-factors skills are solely for frontline employees and once suitably trained, their behavior will change and performance will improve. This approach rests on the belief that the behavior of frontline operators is the source of all problems, which is wide of the mark. Human factors is a challenge for the organization as a whole and extends beyond simply understanding how the human brain works or silver-bullet solutions such as training crew resource-management skills.