Part 1 - What is 'human factors'?

Often the conclusion that results from such enquiries is that despite legal requirements and the activities of those tasked with preventing or controlling risks, the potential for people to simply make mistakes is always significant.

It follows than that to improve on safety, workplaces must examine factors such as the inter-relationship between people, the tasks they undertake, the equipment they use and perhaps most importantly, those aspects of an organisation which have an influence on behaviour.

Lumped together, these elements are often referred to as "human factors".

'Human factors' defined

In its application to health and safety, human factors has been defined by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) as a range of issues including:

> The perceptual, physical and mental capabilities of people and the interactions of individuals with their jobs and working environments

> The influence of equipment and system design on human performance; and

> The 'organisational characteristics' which influence safety-related behaviour.

Human factors and the law

The Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations place a duty on employers when entrusting tasks to their employees, to take into account the capabilities of those employees as regards health and safety.

This means that when allocating tasks to employees, employers should ensure that the demands of the job do not exceed the employees' ability to carry out the work without risk to themselves or others.

Employers must take account of their employees' capabilities and their level of training, together with the potential for human error in certain critical tasks. In certain cases, supervision may need to be intensified in order to control any tasks that could be carried out incorrectly.

Human capability

Safety at work is therefore strongly linked with capability. The average dictionary uses several terms to describe the word 'capability', such as 'able', 'competent', 'gifted' and 'having the capacity'.

Perhaps the last term is the most significant from a health and safety point of view. "Capacity" implies both mental and physical capacity, for instance, the mental capacity to understand why a task should be undertaken in a particular way, and physical capacity, in terms of the actual physical strength and fitness to undertake the task in question.

There is no doubt that people differ tremendously in their particular capabilities!

Human factors is a huge topic of study. However, for this feature we've broken it down into four key aspects - what influences people at work - safety culture - ergonomics - and what causes human error…