Part 2/2
This continues the summary from yesterday (link to part 1 in comments).
With the prior research covered, next the authors move on to their capacities index. Noting, however, that this is still a collaborative work in progress for the authors. In the paper they’ve listed the capacities, along with some suggested ways to measure the capacity.
One is an initial measure, which I assume is the easier starting point. The second is a developing indicator, which from what I can tell, is the longer-term or at least, more difficult goal in developing compared to initial indicators. I haven’t provided a list of all of the indicators (you’ll need to read the full paper).
In saying this, it appears that the paper’s core role is to provide the theory around the capacity index and highlight the capacities themselves, rather than trying to provide a list of measurements. That is, from what I can tell, you’ll need to do the homework yourself to apply the index (but as I said, they did provide some suggestions).
1. the building of capabilities in people so that things go well even under variable conditions (Know)
This involves keeping up-to-date knowledge of health and safety matters. An initial measure could be number of worker insights per million hours worked.
Acquiring and keeping up to date knowledge of health and safety and performance matters is about learning. Learning should be focused on the people best placed to inform about the matters (workers, specialists etc.), and their insights on how to improve. This could involve the identification of safety clutter and identifying and improving on the burden that safety work contributes without being strongly connected to the safety of work.
2. The capacity to anticipate through risk competence and risk appreciation at all levels of the organization (Understand)
This involves understanding the nature of operations and the associated risks. An initial measure could be number of learning reviews per million hours worked, with developing measures a range of resilience-related assessments or control improvement assessments.
This focuses on leaders understanding how work actually occurs and how hazards are interacted with and resources navigated in order to properly resource. Safety system designers are said to traditionally focus on what they believe to be happening in practice with little regard “or assurance … placed on whether the assessments are accurate or what real-world view has been considered in determining critical hazards and risk” (p19).
Again, learning teams and similar learning-focused methods are highlighted as bringing together operational personnel and technical experts to better improve the design and resourcing of work.
3. The capacity to make resources available and goal conflicts visible (Resource)
Expectedly this is about appropriate resourcing and an initial measure could be the number of capacity assessments per million hours worked.
This capacity involves ensuring there are resources and proactive processes, training, skills and other capabilities to meet organisational demands. It’s said organisations need to invest in capability assessments. This item builds on the previous one, where capabilities are reinvested into enabling better adaptations to the myriad of constraints
4. The capacity to monitor and identify issues through effective communication channels (Monitor)
This includes considering info regarding performance and measuring critical control performance. Initial indicators could be the number of investigations of success per million hours worked, with developing indicators a range of things possibly including severity rates, significant event rates, cost of losses and more.
It’s said that this capacity requires moving beyond just investigating failures to leveraging the lessons from normal work. Highlighted is that in contrast to relatively rare failures, successful operational work happens far more often but this success is taken for granted in relation to the learnings which can be explored.
5. The capacity to assure the effectiveness of this monitoring (Comply)
This includes ensuring the organisation has processes to comply with existing duties – and its initial and developing indicators are fairly routine stuff.
It’s discussed how this capacity shouldn’t be treated as a bureaucratic activity, since meeting basic legal requirements also means heeding the critical lessons which have been learnt from fatalities and serious incidents.
Nevertheless, it’s said that compliance audits aren’t the place to start here but rather building effective systems and processes start with worker engagement and trust. Here, the focus of the capacities 1 through are to 4 support this goal, where worker solutions to local issues are prioritised.
6. The capacity to learn from both failure and success (Verify)
This looks at “personally and proactively” verifying and using the resources and processes outlined in the previous steps. Learning as the capacity name highlights is a central focus and thus, the initial and developing indicators involve learning activities (percentage of worker insights effectively closed out per million hours worked for initial and an engagement net promoter score).
It’s said that this verification element is strongly linked to item 1 of the capacity index, verifying that leaders and the business are supporting the insights generated from index 1.
Conclusion
In a final discussion and conclusion, it’s noted that efforts to improve safety should be about deriving insights and solutions from people closest to the work or issues. This requires effective ways for leaders to engage and build trust with workers. The capacities, as highlighted above, may be a way to help build effective and meaningful double loop learning between workers and management.
Across the capacities, simple measures (initial and then developing measures) can be assigned or can be aggregated to form what they call the safety capacity index.
It’s discussed how current measurements and activities still often tap into measuring safety work rather than the safety of work. A positive benefit of a capacity index is that it’s said to be “low bar: much or all of the measurements that make up the index are already routinely conducted by organizations, and many of them actually are relevant to the safety of work as actually performed” (p24).
Authors: Sidney W.A. Dekker, Michael Tooma, 2021, International Labour Review
Study link: https://doi.org/10.1111/ilr.12210
My site with more reviews: https://safety177496371.wordpress.com
Link to the LinkedIn article #1: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/capacity-index-replace-flawed-incident-based-metrics-p12-hutchinson
Link to the LinkedIn article #2: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/capacity-index-replace-flawed-incident-based-metrics-p22-hutchinson
SafetyInsights.org 