Page 5 - 312 Human Factors Primer for Front Line Leaders

The monograph includes:

• an overview of basic human factors concepts
• an overview of five selected human factors topics along with a decision example for
each topic illustrating the decision, human factors concepts, incidents to learn from,
and potential actions and tools (this is the main portion of the monograph)
• guidance on dealing with mistakes
• a summary and reminder of performance influencing factors

2. Human Factors Basics

Human factors is a discipline concerned with designing machines, operations, and work
environments so that they match human capabilities, limitations, and needs. Human factors
includes any technical work (engineering, procedure writing, worker training, worker selection,
etc.) related to the human factor in operator-machine systems (CCPS, 2023).

Human factors considers the human as part of a system: people, the facilities & equipment
that the human works with, and the management systems that the human works within (CCPS,
2007).

Human factors draws on several
scientific disciplines. These include
psychology, ergonomics, and
physiology. The human factors
approach uses these disciplines to
help people understand how and
why they behave and perform as
they do and how best to support
them to perform effectively.

Why is human factors important? Human factors tries to understand and improve the
influences on human performance. Human performance is the measure of an individual’s
ability to execute a task effectively. Reduced human performance is a factor in almost every
major process incident. The costs of major process incidents are well known: fatalities,
environmental impact, facility destruction, costs, and reputational loss. Using human factors
concepts and tools can help to support human performance and minimize process incidents.

Human factors covers a very wide range of topics including, for example, training and
competency, work planning, equipment design, workload and fatigue. Many of these topics

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Human Factors Primer for Front Line Leaders
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