Alan Smith, Head of Investigations at STC INSISO, writes about the importance of being proactive and curious
If there is one key insight from my career that I am always keen to share, it is that all incidents I have investigated were preventable and preceded by indicators that were either missed or overlooked. Controversially, many incidents were actually predictable!
In my career as a Detective Superintendent and now as an industry investigator, my advice is rooted in the pursuit of being proactive and curious rather than waiting until something goes wrong.
Organisations, especially in the rail industry, inherently care about safety, but the challenge lies in fostering an engaged workplace that actively scans for potential issues and embraces continuous learning. It isn’t that organisations don’t care, it is quite simply that they aren’t always orientated or geared towards proactive scanning and learning.
In the pursuit of genuine learning and improvement, emerging philosophies like Human and Organisational Performance (HOP) have proven pivotal. The five principles—acknowledging that error is normal, predicting error-likely situations, understanding the influence of context on behaviour, emphasising the significance of responses, and prioritising continuous learning—form the bedrock of HOP. Of course, human error is inevitable, but organisations can minimise the likelihood and effect of errors through habitual, proactive human-centric analysis. Put simply…building organisational human error resilience.
Recently, we’ve collaborated closely with highly acclaimed HOP Consultant Andy Whitley to infuse his expertise into our COMET audit and investigation toolkit, giving rise to COMET Resilience, a simple and powerful Learning Teams toolkit.
We have been providing risk and assurance software and services for the rail industry with COMET proving particularly useful and modules being used by Network Rail and major contractors building HS2.
The essence of COMET Resilience lies in its ability to align with the HOP philosophy. By facilitating learning teams, organisations can actively involve their people who are closest to the point of work in the reflective process. It’s not just about waiting for an incident to occur; it’s about nurturing a proactive and engaged workplace that continuously seeks improvement.
COMET is the world’s only RCA system with accredited Human Factor Analysis integrated into its process, giving users a chance to identify areas for improvement (latent factors) and to recognise what your organisation does well (resilience factors), all in a safe and open manner, where blame plays no part. If your organisation is keen embrace the HOP philosophy, COMET Resilience provides the perfect framework and captures the findings which will take your organisational learning and improvement to a new level.
A resilient and engaged workplace is the cornerstone of safety and efficiency in the rail industry. The synergy between HOP principles and COMET Resilience provides a comprehensive and compelling approach to managing workforce engagement, thereby enhancing human and organisational performance in the rail industry. Don’t wait for an incident to occur, find out more by visiting: COMET Resilience.
Photo credit: STC INSISO
