We tend to value safety performance only when accidents happen. Of course, the benefits of safety performance are well understood, and the reduction of incidents and accidents is one of them. But just one of them. Talking about safety performance there are two terms that need to be addressed; human behavior and leadership both onboard and ashore.
Human behavior in shipping industry
Operators hire people who fundamentally make decisions under time pressure or other work conditions such as equipment failures, process breakdowns, poor lighting etc; conditions that may push the worker to a problem, or even to fatality. The key driver is to have a clear idea of what the organization wants to achieve and how.
Human behavior provides a framework to understand human performance in shipping industry. Humans are error prone and if we expect people to do things right all the time, we are most likely going to be disappointed!
Therefore, if we cannot measure human performance, how can we adjust?
- Human and Organizational Performance (HOP) helps us understand how humans perform and how we can build systems that are more error tolerant.
- Behavioral Based Safety (BBS) highlights the employee’s behavior in reaction to surrounding environmental events.
Effective leadership in shipping
Leaders are those that define performance. Of course, leadership is difficult to teach but it is the centerfold aspect in team dynamics while leaders need to develop themselves in order to successfully inspire and motivate team members towards improving safety performance in all levels.
An effective leader must
Effective leaders create effective people
Green-Jakobsen
9 ways to boost safety performance
- Define human behavior
- Asses safety culture
- Define safety strategy
- Build organizational capacity
- Improve organization’s safety standards
- Put right mindset in place
- Conduct safety behavior training
- Conduct safety leadership training
- Implement improved safety tools
In the aviation industry transformation towards a more collaborative and open culture started many years ago by implementing what is called ‘threat and error management’. Shipping industry must do something to! Improving safety performance is about improving collaboration; it can bring better levels of motivation, staff retention and a more positive team spirit in order to eliminate risk at sea.
You may also watch Erik Green, CEO Green-Jakobsen A/S, explaining how to measure real safety performance
