![]() ![]() ![]() Impact of HRO principlesĮvidence of error and incident reduction from implementing HRO principles is very thin on the ground, to the point of being almost non-existent, suggesting the HRO reputation is not warranted, or the HRO status only applies to extremely high-risk ventures that have avoided a catastrophe (the latter being the singular mark of success) over several years or decades.Ī longitudinal study of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) shows it took incremental policy changes over a 97-year period to achieve small statistically significant effects between commercial aviation accident reduction and HRO characteristics. We all know what happened to the Texas City refinery in 2005 and the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig in 2010. The HRO process did not exert its intended impact because: it relied on education due to cost-cutting, BP failed to fully resource what was required to change the entire organisation’s practices and processes to suit it excluded the involvement of BP’s executive management team while pushing responsibility for the HRO culture changes down to mid-level managers. ![]() As we all also know, how well these things are executed at the ‘coalface’ will always determine their impact.īP tried to morph into an HRO two decades ago: it developed and issued a leader’s field guide with an educational toolkit, aimed at creating “collective mindfulness” among employees and supervisors. Many readers will know these are simply the basics of good safety management. Common implementation activities include some form of basic human-error prevention training for all staff leadership training for supervisory levels peer-to-peer coaches in the use of error prevention techniques (e.g., identifying human-error traps) root cause analysis of all potential and actual error events providing relevant and regular feedback of good catches and lessons learned and increased error reduction communications through regular workgroup briefings. This begs the question of whether the reputation is deserved, and if so, what is it that actually makes the difference? HRO implementation activitiesĪ major aim of HROs is to install a system-level approach to human-error reduction and process improvement. Despite this, its reputation is such that many industries aspire to adopt HRO principles, particularly healthcare, emergency services, transportation, the defence industry, government and energy. HRO theory has not evolved significantly over the past 20 years, and it still lacks a framework to explain why it succeeds. ![]() HROs are distinguished by the way they manage the unexpected: through a heightened preoccupation with failure (e.g., all near-misses are investigated) a reluctance to simplify (e.g., comprehensive solutions are embraced) a heightened sensitivity to operations (e.g., every aspect of current operational performance is known) a deference to expertise (e.g., seniority is trumped by expert knowledge) and a commitment to resilience (e.g., potential adverse events are anticipated by constantly asking “what if?”). Typically, these include high-hazard operations such as nuclear plants, air-traffic control systems and military aircraft carriers where a catastrophe would be horrific and costly. The signature of an HRO is not that it is completely error-free, but that errors don’t disable it. High-reliability organisations (HROs) are those that are largely failure-free, having succeeded in avoiding catastrophes despite a very high level of risk and operational complexity. ![]()
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