Does your management may want fewer human errors? If

human performance at your facility lags behind what your management thinks is acceptable, you may

need to improve human performance. But how do you improve human performance? With a human

performance improvement program!

Mark developed his first human performance improvement program back in 1985. It’s an interesting story

of how I came to do that, but that story is for another time. The point of this post is to discuss how YOU

can develop your company’s human performance improvement program.

What Do YOU Need To Know About Human Performance Improvement?

Before you start developing a human performance improvement program, you should probably know

something about human error. There is a whole field of study about this called human factors or

ergonomics.

When Mark started designing his first human performance improvement program, he had just finished his

Master’s Degree with an emphasis on Human Factors. Also he had just left the Nuclear Navy with

extensive experience in high-reliability operations. Therefore, he had a pretty good background to

develop a program.

You probably don’t have time to get a Human Factors Master’s Degree or spend seven years in the

Nuclear Navy to get a background to develop a human performance improvement program. What should

you do? We would recommend:

1. Get as much information as you can about human factors.

2. Review other human error reduction/human performance improvement programs.

3. Review the large variety of human error reduction techniques being taught to understand how they

work and their human factors basis.

4. Get feedback or test how the various human performance improvement tools work.

That’s a pretty good list. We can help!

Learn more about the Stopping Human Error Book! https://www.taproot.com/stopping-human-error-

book/ and then buy the book: https://store.taproot.com/book-10-taproot-stopping-human-error

Sign up for the 2 Day Stopping Human Error Course: https://www.taproot.com/course/stopping-

human-error-course/

Join us at our 2021 Global TapRooT® Summit where you’ll learn more about this and many

other improvement program topics: https://www.taproot.com/summit/

They discuss what EHS professionals find challenging or frustrating about investigations.  Such as, many investigations never get to the “real root causes” due to bias, leading to actions that only address superficial issues or focus too much on behavior.Also, organizations rely on RCA tools that are too simplistic for the complexity we often encounter.  There is amazing value at integrating our technology that further visualize data/insights to help detect precursors before they could lead to more serious events.

We are pleased to announce our new partnership with Cority, a trusted EHSQ software solutions provider. With 30+ years of innovation and experience, Cority’s team of 500 experts serve more than 1200 clients across 30 industries in 100 countries, supporting millions of end-users. TapRooT® Investigators and Cority’s clients now have the opportunity to navigate seamlessly between the two solutions during an incident investigation process.

For more information on TapRooT® go to www.taproot.com

For more information on Cority go to www.cority.com

For more information on our partnership go to https://www.taproot.com/taproot-welcomes-our-new-partner-cority/

We’ve all seen accidents that involved automation. Probably the most dramatic case lately was the 737 Max crashes. 

We’ve probably also heard someone say that automation is more reliable than human control. In fact, there are systems that are so unstable that human can’t control the system without the help of automation (for example the B-2 Bomber).

So what is the right role for automation and the right role for the human? 

How can assigning the wrong role to the human or automation cause an accident?

That’s something that Mark Paradies studied while getting his Masters Degree. 

And the proper role of automation and the human (function allocation) is what we will discuss in this video.

So click on play and see how this video might help you when evaluating new systems (or old ones) at your facility,

Here are links to get even more information from our previous blog posts and a link to Mark’s thesis:

Automation and Human Error   https://www.taproot.com/automation-and-human-error/

Automation and Accidents  https://www.taproot.com/automation-and-accidents/

A Cognitive Allocation to Improve Nuclear Power Plant Performance  https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/bitstream/handle/2142/96486/Paradies_Mark_W_MS.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

Monday Accident & Lessons Learned: Is Automation the Solution to Human Error?  https://www.taproot.com/is-automation-the-solution-to-human-error/

Monday Accidents & Lessons Learned: When Automation Fails Without a Heads-Up   https://www.taproot.com/monday-accidents-lessons-learned-when-automation-fails-without-a-heads-up/

Monday Accident & Lessons Learned: How Can Automation Get You Into Trouble?   https://www.taproot.com/monday-accident-lessons-learned-how-can-automation-get-you-into-trouble/
 

Certified TapRooT® Instructor . . . have you been wanting to become one at your company so you can teach TapRooT® to your employees . . . there are a lot more things to consider than just checking off the steps to becoming one and we’ll tell you about that in this week’s TapRooT® TV. Things to consider are things like will your instructor be able to teach at least once a month? It takes regular practice to be an effective instructor. We have learned it takes a year of consistent teaching to encounter most of the types of questions an instructor will receive in training. How experienced are they at doing TapRooT® investigations? Experience can bring a great perspective to the course they teach, especially when attendees start asking questions about applying TapRooT® in real-life scenarios. Are they instructor material? Just because someone has a lot of experience with investigations doesn’t necessarily mean they will make a great instructor. Links mentioned in the video: https://store.taproot.com/5-Day

 https://www.taproot.com/course/3-day-...

 https://www.taproot.com/becoming-a-ce...

SHOW LESS

Patient Safety . . . medical errors are the third-leading cause of death in the USA just behind Cancer and heart disease. With an estimated 400,000 of us experiencing PREVENTABLE harm. If you are passionate about patient safety, join us for this episode. We discuss how we can help lower these errors and also discuss a great success story that should be an inspiration to all in the medical field that these events can be used as opportunities for improvement thereby reducing the probability that they will occur again in the future. Register here for the July 1 webinar: https://store.taproot.com/root-cause-...

 Register here for the July 27-28 2 Day Course in Knoxville: 

https://store.taproot.com/2-day-north...

 For more information on TapRooT® go to 

https://www.taproot.com