Starting from Scratch?

Emerging safety critical industries may not have a proven legacy on which to base the development of their training programmes. SCT’s Mario Pierobon investigates best practices for ensuring new training programmes are relevant and effective.

‘Safety-critical industries’ can be defined as those industries where safety is paramount and where the consequences of failure or malfunction may be loss of life, serious injury, serious environmental damage, or harm to property [i]. However, as new industries emerge the scope of what is within the definition of ‘safety critical industries’ is set to expand as new challenges and threats emerge. Indeed, there are emerging safety critical industries, which did not exist until a few decades or perhaps even a few years ago. One such industry is, for example, offshore wind energy production. Another one is that of artificial intelligence and autonomous vehicles.

What is common to and indeed distinctive of emerging safety critical industries is that they may not have a rich legacy of standards and regulations on which to base the development of training programmes. Players in such industries may have no reference which is immediately applicable or even relevant to them. Therefore, they tend to need to differentiate from legacy practices and to develop training based on best current training development practices.

Traditional Procedural Approach to Training

It should be observed that approaches which focus on human errors have traditionally prevailed in research, management, and training practices, say Teemu Reiman and Pia Oedewald in a 2009 report issued by the Swedish Radiation Safety Authority available online and entitled “Evaluating safety-critical organizations – emphasis on the nuclear industry” [ii]. “Thus, many organisational safety evaluation processes seek to identify how the possibility of human errors is handled in the risk analysis, training courses and daily practices,” they say.

Training and safety management traditionally emphasise the danger in not following procedures, according to Reiman and Oedewald. “This message can be interpreted as non-compliance automatically having dangerous consequences. When the staff notice that this is not the case, their confidence in the correctness of the rules wavers.”

When considering the meaning of rules in an organisation - Reiman and Oedewald point out - it is important to understand what role is given to them and what the personnel’s attitude towards them is. “The quality and number of rules as such cannot be used to predict organisational activity. The role of rules is understood in very different ways depending on the organisation level and duties.”

Another established tenet in the traditional approach to safety management in several legacy safety critical industries is the one whereby long tenures, experience and adequate training are often considered proof of high competence. However, long tenure and experience as such do not guarantee competence. Long tenure can also lead to routine. Experience is then no longer a benefit but can be a source of errors when the work and its outcomes are not actively reflected upon. Routine tasks are a major source of incidents, according to Reiman and Oedewald. “Furthermore, new technology, new job contents and working practices, and new safety and efficiency demands placed on, e.g., maintenance activities set new requirements, which means that some of the old habits and out-dated conceptions have to be unlearned.”

Reflective Orientation of Training

Reflective as opposed to procedural orientation towards work facilitates learning, say Reiman and Oedewald. Training development in emerging safety critical industries should foster this reflective orientation instead of leading trainees to repeat tasks as learned methods.

In accordance with the reflective perspective, knowledge is created in a work situation. This is the source of learning from experience and the prerequisite for the accumulation of skills and knowledge, said Leena Norros in a 2004 publication by the VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland available online and entitled “Acting under uncertainty: The core-task analysis in ecological study of work” [iii]. The described features of the daily practice project a development trajectory which is called ‘reflective expertise’ and the growth of expertise within this trajectory is not restricted to distinct events or demanding situations.

Reflective expertise is not a qualification that distinguishes between experts and novices, and it is not related to a specific situation in the learning continuum. Instead, reflectiveness appears as habitual interpretativeness in the practitioner’s actions. This disposition is characterised by understanding the significance of focussing on the phenomena, which is repeated in action. The construction of action is also shaped by considering the situational constraints and possibilities, said Norros.

One technique which can support reflective learning is ‘storytelling’. This technique is considered an ‘experience sharing’ mode of learning and it traces its roots in general management as a tool to promote organisational learning and support knowledge management, say Andrew Lowe, Brenton Hayward, and Kate Branford in another report issued by the Swedish Radiation Safety Authority issued in 2016, available online, and entitled “Leadership in safety critical industries: Project Report 1 Literature Review” [iv].

“It is suggested that senior healthcare leaders can enhance learning and improve the safety culture by sharing their experience about patient safety events, including stories about personal errors and their potential impact,” Lowe, Hayward, and Branford report. “This is said to have significant benefit by personalising the importance of safety. Listening to other people’s experience is also a non-threatening way to learn.”

Safety Leadership

Indeed, training programmes in emergency safety critical industries intending to be on target are most effective if participants are given feedback on their current performance and an opportunity to develop the relevant skills on, for example, how to better involve personnel in safety and how to demonstrate commitment, according to Lowe, Hayward, and Branford. “It is suggested that this approach is likely to be more effective than purely knowledge-based courses.”

Safety leadership has long been recognised as very important in both safety science and practice, and it needs to be strongly embedded in the training programmes within emerging safety critical industries. “Most definitions of safety culture emphasise the integral influence of an organisation’s leadership group on the safety attitudes and behaviour of employees,” said Lowe, Hayward, and Branford. “Safety leadership frequently involves implementing and driving change within organisations.”

Driving change requires a significant commitment from an organisation’s leadership, this must also be consistent over time. Lowe, Hayward, and Branford bring the example of the implementation of a maintenance resource management (MRM) training program designed to improve aviation maintenance safety based on the practice of crew resource management (CRM) in flight operations. The initiative – the researchers observe – initially showed positive, enthusiastic support on the part of maintenance technicians; however, several months after training initialisation, these same technicians voiced frustration and anger with the programme, citing a lack of support and clarity from leadership on the application of the training.

There is one formal training and education programme that supports safety leadership and originates from the healthcare industry, it is called ‘Executive WalkRounds’. The ‘Executive WalkRounds’ are considered ‘on the job learning’ as they involve on-the-job experience or simulated real-world scenarios that enable managers to review their decisions and actions in context, and thus provide an opportunity for learning.

“In this technique, groups of executives accompanied by nurses and other staff conduct weekly visits to different areas of their hospital. They ask about ‘near miss’ events and the associated conditions, including any system contributing factors. Events are recorded and analysed, and quality improvement staff involved to help identify and address root causes,” Lowe, Hayward, and Branford report. “The approach requires ‘knowledgeable and invested senior leadership’, with leaders who are able to demonstrate their commitment to safety while helping address real safety issues. The WalkRounds approach is not designed specifically to develop safety leadership, but observation of more experienced managers could clearly achieve this outcome.”

Players in emerging safety critical industries may not have a thorough legacy on which to base the development of training programmes, they should therefore concentrate their efforts on best current training development practices. The reflective orientation of training and the account of safety leadership in training programmes are two best practices to ensure that training is relevant and effective.

[i]

Fiona Saunders, Safety–critical industries: definitions, tensions and trade-offs,

http://fionasaunders.co.uk/safety-critical-industries-definitions-tensions-and-tradeoffs/

[ii]

Teemu Reiman and Pia Oedewald, Evaluating safety-critical organizations – emphasis on the nuclear industry,

https://www.stralsakerhetsmyndigheten.se/contentassets/dd847a4bf3734d7c855f690867ba60b1/200912-evaluating-safety-critical-organizations--emphasis-on-the-nuclear-industry

[iii]

Leena Norros, Acting under uncertainty: The core-task analysis in ecological study of work,

https://www.vttresearch.com/sites/default/files/pdf/publications/2004/P546.pdf

[iv]

Andrew Lowe, Brenton Hayward and Kate Branford, Leadership in safety critical industries: Project Report 1,

https://www.stralsakerhetsmyndigheten.se/contentassets/b7538027a946460daf3ce2b120500535/201611-leadership-in-safety-critical-industries-project-report-1