Article on blame culture in the 'railway'

[theageofthetra]

Interesting article on how the present system isn't working.

http://www.railtechnologymagazine.c...collaborative-just-culture-for-managing-staff

RSSB: Industry should adopt collaborative ‘just culture’ for managing staff

Rail companies should stop blaming staff for incidents and instead focus on understanding how they perform at work, new guidance has advised.

Published today by the Rail Safety and Standards Board (RSSB), the new guidance argues that instead of issuing blame, companies should focus on understanding how people perform at work, what affects their performance, and how this can be enhanced.

It aims to help rail companies develop more effective competence development plans (CDPs), that help staff perform to the best of their abilities.

The Rail Accident Investigation Branch (RAIB) has highlighted the importance of CDPs having found that deficiencies in competence management systems have contributed to serious accidents.

It is also a legal requirement to ensure that people are sufficiently competent to carry out safety critical work on the railway.

Guidance for train drivers has been around for some time, but it is now available for those working as guards or platform staff who dispatch trains.

RSSB’s lead human factors specialist, Paul Leach, explained: “The key point here is about having a fair culture – sometimes referred to as a ‘just culture’.

 

[infobleep]

Interesting article on how the present system isn't working.

http://www.railtechnologymagazine.c...collaborative-just-culture-for-managing-staff

That is very interesting and a good approach.

Some people work better under a culture of positive thinking than negative

When it's negative one thinks what mistake will I make next and research has, so I'm told, shown that the more you wonder when your next mistake might be the more chance you'll make one.

 

[Panupreset]

It's simply to do with money. It's easier to blame someone rather than provide better training or move a signal that is badly positioned. The emphasis is put on individuals not to make mistakes rather than removing the risks which can lead to mistakes which is far more expensive.

The classic one is fatigue. Rather than employing the correct number of drivers and having a proper fatigue management system and putting some thought into rosters and diagrams, drivers are told that it's up to them to manage their lifestyle away from work so as not to be tired at work.

 

[Bromley boy]

Very good article. I hope the TOCs take note.

The railway is thirty years behind most other industries in terms of the way it looks after its staff. High time it was dragged into the 21st century!

 

[theageofthetra]

It's simply to do with money. It's easier to blame someone rather than provide better training or move a signal that is badly positioned. The emphasis is put on individuals not to make mistakes rather than removing the risks which can lead to mistakes which is far more expensive.

The classic one is fatigue. Rather than employing the correct number of drivers and having a proper fatigue management system and putting some thought into rosters and diagrams, drivers are told that it's up to them to manage their lifestyle away from work so as not to be tired at work.

Regarding fatigue the investigation into the buffer collision at KX last year could hopefully be a turning point on that.

 

[Panupreset]

It seemed pretty clear to me when I read the report, where the RAIB put the blame!

 

[DarloRich]

Very good article. I hope the TOCs take note.

The railway is thirty years behind most other industries in terms of the way it looks after its staff. High time it was dragged into the 21st century!

Not so much where I work. We already have the start of this kind of approach but i imagine it is different at the coal face.

 

[Economist]

"Just Culture" has been promoted in aviation for ages, so there's no reason really why it can't be transferred over to the railways. The Non-Technical Skills (NTS) courses which a lot of TOCs use these days emphasise the difference between an error and a violation and that's not a bad start to be honest.

 

[twpsaesneg]

Fair Culture was coming into Network Rail when I left a few years ago, and there was a lot of work being done on better competence training. Across the infrastructure side there is a big emphasis on "Safety By Design" when installing new kit / modifying existing, which is on top of the requirements of the CDM Regulations.

Unfortunately there are so many existing assets that everything can't change overnight.

 

[Carlisle]

The railway is thirty years behind most other industries in terms of the way it looks after its staff. High time it was dragged into the 21st century!

A fair proportion of old school BR management was tolerant and understanding of mistakes etc, maybe it changed partly as a reaction to the number of serious accidents that happened shortly after privatisation plus the more individual blame/responsibility culture that was always more prevalent in the road transport industry moving across to rail when the bus companies took over .

 

[dviner]

Fair Culture was coming into Network Rail when I left a few years ago, and there was a lot of work being done on better competence training. Across the infrastructure side there is a big emphasis on "Safety By Design" when installing new kit / modifying existing, which is on top of the requirements of the CDM Regulations.

Unfortunately there are so many existing assets that everything can't change overnight.

The latter being something that people tend to overlook. However, that doesn't really tie in with the topic of this thread.

 

[twpsaesneg]

The latter being something that people tend to overlook. However, that doesn't really tie in with the topic of this thread.

Not totally, but linked. The thinking in NR at the time was that if engineered safeguards are put in place then the reliance upon the human factor to do what the rules say is lessened, which goes some way to reducing blame culture.

There are an alarming number of safety critical processes on the railway that are or were solely reliant upon a single person doing exactly what they are supposed to do, which is fine until someone makes a mistake. The only way to learn from the mistakes is to analyse what could be done differently to provide a safeguard if it happens again, not blame them.

My point I guess is that it is slowly coming in - take the worksafe procedure which is now pretty much universal across the infrastructure contractors and the maintainer. Fair Culture will come.

 

[mpthomson]

"Just Culture" has been promoted in aviation for ages, so there's no reason really why it can't be transferred over to the railways. The Non-Technical Skills (NTS) courses which a lot of TOCs use these days emphasise the difference between an error and a violation and that's not a bad start to be honest.

Quite so and as a result of the 'Human Factors' work done after the KAL 007 Korean Airlines crash. It's increasingly used for serious medical incidents too, especially those in operating theatres with their strict hierarchies.