Human factors often becomes misconstrued as solely ergonomic issues, whereas the ideal application of human factors requires employee intraharmony. In 24-hour facilities, this intraharmony is strategic not only to the achievement of individual and corporate values, but also to achieving active employee involvement and the prevention of catastrophic human error. This session addresses the neglected patches in the human factors fabric as the human attempts to achieve intraharmony with his behavior, reaction, alertness - and resulting performance. Intraharmonyinvolves a thorough understanding of physiological and psychological factors that can influence his/her interaction and relationship with equipment, processes and other humans.
As technology has increased, so too has a parallel level of human error potential of employees in safety-sensitive jobs.
This presentation will discuss intraharmony and achieving safer facilities through a methodology that mental and physical human errors, 24-hour set-ups, and options for corporate culture, policy, personnel safety and wellness program alignment.
An intraharmonious solution utilizes a combination of divergent strategies, concurrently or progressively, to create orchestrated improvements to enhance individual, team or facility performance. Often these improvements include organizational strategies of structure and policy, ndividual efforts, community and family involvement and various efforts, that when worked together or progressively, create the optimum environment for performance. In the safety arena, reaching individual intraharmony is the ability to monitor ones' alertness - both mental and physical, and technical and situational awareness, and then to take the proper steps to optimize that performance. To reach an optimum state of this intraharmony in the work environment, there must be additional components addressed.
Typically, when defined, the human factors umbrella covers three basic relationship areas that include: co-workers, processes and procedures, and equipment.
Maintaining cognizance of his/her "relationship" with:
co-workers
processes and procedures
equipment
his/her own performance ability.
To reach an intraharmonious environment, the entire list of relationship areas should be addressed. First, the relationship withco-workers, from an intraharmonious point-of-view:
Research indicates that as duty time approaches 14-hours post-waking, individual acuity and motivation may decrease. Shift change communications may become difficult as one crew comes in to work fatigued and one crew experiences "get home-itus," leaving the on-coming crew with limited details on the previous shifts' operations. Also, without proper Crew Resource Management training, team members may not have effective relationships to intervene in unsafe acts with each other. As fatigue levels increase, physical and mental motivation decline. Organizational and individual strategies can enhance these communications issues.
