_____
SAFETY AND HEALTH ALERTS AND GUIDANCE
HUMAN AND ORGANISATIONAL FACTORS FOR SAFE WORKPLACES
People are involved in all aspects of work and keeping them safe should be a priority for all workplaces. With this in mind, the Department has developed educational resources on human and organisational factors, otherwise known as HOF. The new online hub aims to promote safe and productive workplaces by educating management and workers on the top ten factors that affect safety and performance.
WHAT IS HOF? The term HOF refers to all elements within a workplace impacting the people who work there. In HOF, these elements generally fall into three categories. • Organisational factors refer to the organisation and its attributes (e.g. organisational priorities, decision-making and strategy, culture of the company or team, availability of resources). • Job factors describe the task and its characteristics (e.g. physical working environment, human-machine interface, workload, task requirements). • Individual factors relate to the person doing the job (e.g. personality, competence and skill, mood, attitude, mental ability, individual health factors). Managing human and organisational factors is the process of recognising human limitations and capabilities and then designing work and workplaces with these in mind.
| 6 | ThinkSafe vol. 2 no. 2 May 2020
WHY IS HOF IMPORTANT? Human and organisational factors influence human reliability and performance, contributing to how effectively and safely a worker is able to do their job. Optimising human and organisational factors reduces the likelihood of error, improve safety performance and help prevent reoccurrence of safety incidents. Not only will integrating HOF principles improve physical safety, when done well it can: • improve productivity • have a positive impact on workplace culture • help develop mentally healthy workplaces.
