TITLE:
Reviewing Non-Technical Skills & Organizational Learning: A Comparative Analysis of Critical Safety Factors within the UK’s High-Risk Industries
AUTHORS:
Agha Ibiam, Wayne Harrop
KEYWORDS:
Accidents, Human, Organisational-learning, Non-Technical Skills, Nuclear
JOURNAL NAME:
Engineering,
Vol.14 No.11,
November
7,
2022
ABSTRACT: Accidents in high-tech organisations are often triggered by a
concatenation of human and system anomalies and errors, proving destructive to
life, property and the environment. Urgent attention is required to minimize
such events by training workers in high-risk organisations and ensuring
adequate levels of Non-Technical Skills (NTS) training to counter related risks
within the spectrum of their daily tasks. Organisational learning becomes
equally relevant when industries are inclined towards becoming learning
organisations by encouraging and promoting learning to manage safety. A
comparative assessment is drawn by examining current practices in aviation and
in the oil and gas sectors. The online survey was used to gather primary data, as well as interviewing 15
safety experts across the three sectors and another 15 safety experts recruited
as focus groups to establish if NTS and organisational learning are used in
safety management. Our sample comprised health and safety experts from the
nuclear (n = 124, 54%), aviation (n = 59, 25%), and oil and gas sectors (n =
49, 21%). Findings revealed that the nuclear sector has not fully and
officially acknowledged the use of NTS to train workers. The nuclear sector
should look inwardly at how safety is managed since there is limited evidence of formal
knowledge or techniques for transferring lessons to staff on NTS, which has
proven to be a major critical “ingredient” in safety management in
high-risk organisations.