HR practices that minimize accidents caused by human error include making safety policies succinctly clear, conducting frequent safety training, stimulating the participation of workers, implementing human error prevention systems, and frequent checks and maintenance of safety procedures.
HR measures of vital significance
- Unambiguous safety policies: establish and publish easy-to-understand workplace safety policies regarding safe work procedure, right use of personal protective equipment (PPE), and emergency procedure. Update these policies regularly to maintain pace with technological and regulatory advancements.
- Ongoing safety training: conduct routine safety training for new and existing employees with major focus areas on the identification of hazards, proper use of PPE, response to accidents, and compliance with procedures. Certification will ensure competency.
- Employee engagement: actively engage staff in safety discussion and before each shift to raise awareness and ownership for safe practice, hence potentially preventing error which could lead to accidents.
- Human error avoidance frameworks: apply systematic methods like the Swiss Cheese Model for layering a number of safety measures, the STAR technique (Stop, Think, Act, Review) for routine procedures, and HEART (Human Error Assessment and Reduction Technique) for identifying and reducing potential for error.
- Human error observation and analysis: implement observation methods and error analysis techniques (e.g., job safety analysis, Fault Tree Analysis) to identify unsafe acts or conditions and improve work methods accordingly.
- Safety culture and surveillance: promote a culture of reporting and learning from incidents, continuous surveillance of controls, and creativity in preventive measures to ensure ongoing improvement.
Additional measures
- Make PPE enforcement compulsory: have adequate PPE readily available, correctly used, and well-maintained.
- Management of fatigue and stress: intervene to manage human factors like fatigue, stress, and distraction by controlling workload and supportive HR practices because they are major contributors to errors.
- Systems approach to safety: intervene to modify the work setting and organizational context to facilitate human performance rather than attributing it to the human being, such that system defenses are strong to prevent error propagation.
These HR interventions collectively reduce human error and resultant accidents by targeting behavior, environment, training, and organizational culture.
