Ep213: Human Factors, Error, Blame & Systems Thinking, with A/Prof Gemma Read

Safety on Tap

We are now realising that just focussing on preventing bad stuff is a pretty limited view of health and safety, and that many of our approaches are limited in the application and the quality of their outputs. So how would we broaden out focus to study and improve normal work? It turns out there are theories, models, and people who've doing this for 80 years. Allow me to introduce Human Factors, Ergonomics, and Systems Thinking.

Hey, it’s Andrew, and this is Safety on Tap.

Since you're listening in, you must be a leader wanting to grow yourself and drastically improve health and safety along the way. Welcome to you, you're in the right place. If this is your first time listening in, thanks for joining us and well done for trying something different to improve! And of course welcome back to all of you wonderful regular listeners.

My guest today is Associate Professor Gemma Read, from the Centre for Human Factors and Sociotechnical Systems, at the University of the Sunshine Coast.

We talk about one of Gemma's journal papers to bring this dialogue to life. The paper, called "State of science: evolving perspectives on human error", is really quite readable (click here to download it) [hyperlink URL is https://research.usc.edu.au/esploro/outputs/journalArticle/State-of-science-evolving-perspectives-on/99571607402621]

Here's Gemma: