Human Elements in

Safety

Safety Organization of the Philippines, Inc.

Overview
 Human Elements in Safety Defined
 What should be considered in the effective
implementation of the OSH program
 Psychological factor that influence safety
program
 Principles of Learning
 Success of Safety and Health Program

Safety Organization of the Philippines, Inc.

Human Elements in Safety
 Offers views on how a human being reacts to
a given situation and perform a certain task

Safety Organization of the Philippines, Inc.

What should be considered in the
effective implementation of the
OSH program

 Human elements is an essential factor

 If accidents are to be reduced, the safety
professional must assist and influence not only
the supervisors and other line management, but
individual employees as well.

Safety Organization of the Philippines, Inc.

Psychological factors that
influence safety program
 Individual differences
 Motivation
 Emotions
 Stress
 Attitudes
 Behaviors
 Learning processes

Safety Organization of the Philippines, Inc.

a. Individual differences

 An on-going problem
 One person’s behavior is different from
another person’s behavior. This difference is
brought on by the individual’s attitude and
situational variables

Safety Organization of the Philippines, Inc.

Reasons why a worker will work
safely depends on the following:
 Present situation – is he rushed? Fatigue? In
poor health?
 Past experiences – were accidents avoided
in the past? What amount of training does he
have?
 The workplace and methods design – were
the job and workplace ergonomically
designed?

Safety Organization of the Philippines, Inc.

b. Motivation
 The best way of motivating employees is by a
joint labor/management safety committee that
is fully endorsed by all levels of the company

Safety Organization of the Philippines, Inc.

c. Emotion
 Can both be attractive and destructive
 Emotions can interfere with thought
processes, resulting in behavior that conflicts
with a rational approach to work tasks,
examples of which are anger, fear,
excitement, anxiety, shame, etc.
 The safety professional/supervisor must have
the ability to discern when people are holding
their feelings in and when they are
expressing them
Safety Organization of the Philippines, Inc.
d. Stress
 A factor that accelerates the rate of aging
through wear and tear of daily living
 Is always present and can be good or bad
depending on how employees react to the
stress on or off the job.

Safety Organization of the Philippines, Inc.

e. Attitudes
 Three components of attitude
1. Affective – the positive or negative feeling
(affects) of attitudes.
Ex. Some people may not like doing
something in a safe way but cannot tell you
why.

Safety Organization of the Philippines, Inc.

2. Cognitive – the extent of knowledge of an
employee.
Ex. Some people work safety because they
have worked through the problem and have
decided that working safely is the best way;
others may not work safely because their
attitude toward safety is based on incorrect
information or knowledge
3. Action – a person’s response or attitude is
dependent, in part, upon the individuals
previous experiences.
Safety Organization of the Philippines, Inc.
f. Behavior
 Attitudes are internal and cannot be
measured. Accordingly, it is necessary to
observe and measure employee behavior.
Change behavior and you modify attitudes.
 Note: workers attitudes toward OSH
procedures and policies can make a
difference between an effective safety
program

Safety Organization of the Philippines, Inc.

What must be recognized
1. On production
2. Plant/worker morale
3. Turn over
4. Absenteeism
5. Plant/worker safety, and
6. The like

Safety Organization of the Philippines, Inc.

 Example: If someone sees a person on the
street that resembles a friend, the immediate
response would be a smile, friendly gestures
and warm voice quality and so on.
 Note: all individuals have certain feelings
about other people or situations and tend to
act accordingly to their attitudes, which have
been formed over the years.

Safety Organization of the Philippines, Inc.

g. Learning process
 Through the learning process people
discover their psycho-social needs, establish
habitual patterns of behavior and emotional
reactions, and develop the attitudes they
bring with them to industry.

Safety Organization of the Philippines, Inc.

Principles of Learning
 Reinforcement
 An act of recognizing employees for a job safely
and well done. It increases the likelihood that
workers will repeat the desired behavior.
 Knowledge of results
 Closely allied to recognition
 People like to know how they are doing on the job

Safety Organization of the Philippines, Inc.

 Practice
 Merely putting a worker through sufficient
training session is not enough. To be sure
habit patterns are firmly entrenched, worker must
practice what they have learned.
 Meaningfulness
 For management and workers, it is understanding
the value of producing a marketable product
(which contributes to job satisfaction, job
retention, profit, etc.) and the negative
consequences of failing to engage in appropriate
actions, leading to higher production costs, higher
reduction rates, accidents and their associated
losses.
Safety Organization of the Philippines, Inc.
 Selective learning
 Relating subject matter to individual needs will
ensure the proper selection and retention
 Frequency
 Everyone does best those things he/she practices
the most
 When workers hear frequent reference to the
kinds of problem, hazards and procedures that
cause and prevent accident, they will learn more
than through a one exposure routine.

Safety Organization of the Philippines, Inc.

 Recall
 Closely allied to the principle of frequency
 What is learned last can usually be most easily
recalled
 Ways for workers to come into constant contact
with the safety rules and regulations through
activities such as contest, reviews of safety
regulations and committed work

Safety Organization of the Philippines, Inc.

 Primacy
 This must be taken into consideration in two
aspects of the safety program
1. The workers initial contact with safety
procedures should be one of major importance
2. In the training program, habit patterns using safe
method should assume primary importance

Training should be right from the beginning

Safety Organization of the Philippines, Inc.

 Intensity
 Those things made most vivid to the worker will
be retained the longest
 Ex: eye-catching slogan, posters and the like
 Transfer of training
 Positive transfer of training occurs when the
previous learning experience helps current
learning or enhances current performance

Safety Organization of the Philippines, Inc.

Success of Safety and Health
Program
 Depends upon its acceptance by those to
whom it is directed
 Program acceptance, in turn, depends on an
understanding of the psychological factors
influencing program success.

Safety Organization of the Philippines, Inc.