Human Factors in Risk Assessment

Thinking ahead about Human Factors risks and planning to mitigate those risks is more effective than waiting for problems to occur and then trying to fix them after the event. Section 19 of The Safety, Health and Welfare at Work Act, 2005 requires risk assessments to be in place and this includes taking account of risks from Human Factors. Organisations need to take a proportionate approach to Human Factors in risk assessment based on their hazard and risk profile.

Integrating Human Factors into your Risk Assessment

A risk assessment is an organised look at your work activities using 3 key steps - identify hazards, assess the risks and put control measures in place. It is important to ensure you have an adequate understanding of the human role in relevant tasks or activities.

To integrate Human Factors in the risk assessment process, involve workers to understand and assess the risk and what can go wrong. Select a task or activity and ask the following:

What are the potential immediate and long-term effects on people including injuries and psychological health issues? Who is most at risk? Have you considered vulnerable workers? What errors and non-compliances are relevant? See Reducing Errors and Non-Compliances here. What factors make errors more likely? See individual, job and organisational factors here. What difficulties or mistakes have happened in the past? What makes a task difficult or frustrating? If you had an apprentice doing this task, what would you/others tell them to watch out for? What control measures do those who do the task think are most effective and why? What actions need to be taken to ensure effective control measures can be implemented? What should our plan be for reviewing the risk assessment to take account of task changes and amending or improving control measures?

Focus on work-as-done in your risk assessment

In risk assessment, the aim is to take account of what really happens in a task,  that is ‘work-as-done’, and not an imagined version of the task, work-as-imagined.  Work-as-imagined is how we think others might do the work. When we imagine work we tend to be overly optimistic. We imagine people don’t make mistakes, follow procedures and are working in ideal conditions. Task analysis is a helpful tool to understand ‘work-as-done’ and the risks associated with specific tasks. This could involve breaking down a task into smaller parts, walking and talking through a task, and asking questions (like those above) in the environment where the task occurs. By analysing the task in this way, you can identify risks that require attention.