Safety at the Sharp End: A Guide to Non-Technical Skills

Many 21st century operations are now characterised by teams of workers dealing with significant risks (e.g. high inventory plants; high speed transportation) and complex technology, operating in competitive, commercially-driven environments. Informed managers in such sectors have realised the necessity of understanding the human dimension to their operations if they hope to improve their production and safety performance.While organisational safety culture is probably the main determinant of workplace safety, it is also necessary to focus on the non-technical skills of the system operators based at the 'sharp end' of the organisation. These skills are the cognitive and social skills required for efficient and safe operations, often termed Crew Resource Management (CRM) skills. In industries such as civil aviation, it has long been appreciated that the majority of accidents could have been prevented if better non-technical skills had been demonstrated by personnel operating and maintaining the system. As a result, the aviation industry has pioneered the development of CRM training. Many other organisations are beginning to introduce non-technical skills training, including the healthcare sector.This volume presents a general guide to the theory and practice of non-technical skills for safety. It covers the identification, training and evaluation of non-technical skills and has been written for use by individuals who are not experts on the non technical skills addressed in crew resource management and other safety or human factors courses. The material is also suitable for undergraduate and post-experience students studying human factors or industrial safety programmes.

Rhona Flin is Professor of Applied Psychology in the School of Psychology at the University of Aberdeen, UK.