What is human reliability?
Managing human reliability in the 10 Human and Organisational Factors
Human reliability refers to the likelihood of successful human performance within specified
timeframes and environmental conditions. It is critical to overall system reliability and is one
factor that contributes to, or prevents, unwanted events occurring.
Management of human reliability
Managing human reliability involves increasing the likelihood of achieving desired
performance outcomes and reducing the likelihood of human error. There are multiple
factors that contribute to the likelihood of error or ‘shape’ human performance. These are
referred to as performance-shaping factors and can be categorised as:
job-related – e.g. difficulty or complexity of tasks, time available, physical work
environment
individual-related – e.g. physical capability and condition, stress, motivation
organisation-related – e.g. clarity of roles and responsibilities, level of supervision,
workplace culture.
Optimising the job, individual and organisational characteristics that influence human
performance is key to improving reliability and reducing human failure.
Human failure
Performance-shaping factors and human reliability, failure and performance.
Human failure is not random. Understanding why failure occurs and the contributing factors
will help identify more effective controls to prevent reoccurrence. There are two types of
human failure: errors and violations.
Human error is a result of an unintentionally inappropriate or undesirable human
behaviour. It is common for unwanted events in industry to be attributed to human error
when the desired performance outcome is not achieved.
While it is known that human error often plays a part in incidents, it is not enough to identify
that somebody made an error, or to blame the people involved. This doesn’t provide the
organisation with an opportunity to identify the latent hazards (e.g. within systems and
procedures, or accepted deviations and common practices) that contributed to the event.
Violations – or non-compliances – are deliberate actions, usually in an attempt to solve
problems, not cause them. They are not simply malicious behaviours. Most can be
explained as entirely rational responses to the situation a worker was presented with.
Human behaviour
People demonstrate three different types of behaviour when carrying out tasks, depending
on the level of conscious effort applied. These are:
skill-based – simple and routine, often repeated, tasks
rule-based – apply rules to complete a task
knowledge-based – apply significant conscious effort when the rules no longer apply.
Understanding the types of behaviour required to carry out tasks enables the identification
of the types of error that can occur within those tasks.
Human factors in incident investigation
An incident investigation gathers and organises information that can be used to identify the
human and organisational factors that contributed to the incident, and therefore inform
recommendations for improvement.
The key to effective investigations is to ensure that the approach used discovers the
underlying reasons why an incident occurred, not just the error made by the last person
involved. Effective incident investigation is promoted by a ‘no blame’ culture – a culture that
encourages incident reporting, and does not automatically assign blame to the person
directly involved in the incident.
Human error in incidents
Human error by itself has little meaning when cited as the cause of an incident. Some
incident analyses cite human error as the cause of the incident, and then go further and
identify that the human error was due to a lack of training. A typical remedial action is to
retrain the person involved in the incident. However, in terms of human and organisational
factors, it is not sufficient to note ‘limited’ or ‘lack of training’ as a root cause. The analysis
should find out why the person involved lacked training, what led to an untrained person
being involved in the task and what system within the organisation failed.
Factors that promote effective incident investigation include:
a system allowing any worker (including contractors) to formally report an incident
clear guidance on how initial reports are to be made and the information required in
those reports
the option to report anonymously
rules for determining whether or not to investigate a reported incident, and the required
speed of response (based on the actual or potential severity of the incident)
resources to conduct an investigation, with external support available as needed.
