Human Factors; Safety Critical Communication

This video is for the online Human Factors self assessment tool, by Step Change in Safety. Contact [e-mail] if you would like to find out more.
Introduction Many different types of communication, spoken, written and visual, can be critical to safety in the workplace, including; general communications in the form of safety information, communications between team members or between different teams during operations or maintenance work, and emergency communications. Times when effective communication is critical include: shift hand-overs, between different functions of an organisation e.g. operations and maintenance and at times of high activity e.g. during non-routine activities process upsets and emergencies. The importance of effective communication is generally recognised, however, guidance on how to communicate effectively can often be lacking. communications are basically ‘messages’. Which need to be: created, sent and then received. There could be problems at any of these stages which may result misunderstandings that cause in the person receiving the message not acting in the way that was intended. Effective communication involves giving a message, answering questions on the message, involving others in delivering the message and ultimately checking that the message has been received and properly understood. This part of the assessment tool aims at giving you some tools to assess how effective your communications are right now and gives you some ideas of where to improve.