Should the Institute of Ergonomics and Human Factors be more of a campaigning organisation? Yes.

Published in 'The Ergonomist', Newsletter of the Institute of Ergonomics and Human Factors, October 2012, p. 4

In September's The Ergonomist, the President of the Institute of Ergonomics and Human Factors asked whether the IEHF should become more of a campaigning organisation. Assuming that we want to be a relevant organisation, then the answer must be 'yes'. While we have many interesting research findings and effective applications, we rarely seem to communicate our impact in the world.

It is a sad state of affairs that the 'impact' of publicly-funded research is judged primarily by the citation of journal articles by one's fellow researchers and oneself. It is equally sad that we have so few press releases, white papers, blogs or videos of our impactful theories, findings or applications. We seem to put most effort into forms of communication that are least visible to policy makers, decision makers and the public. Perhaps this is why we are still too anonymous to the wider world.

We cannot be content with only writing to each other via Old Media or speaking to each other in closed conferences if we want to make a visible difference. The research article or technical report should not be the end of the line for any of us. If we think that our discipline is important, then we need to to be confident and decisive in our messages and campaigns, and clever in how we convey them.

It is great to see that our engagement with social media is growing (e.g. LinkedIn, twitter) and that we have had recent public exhibitions. But we need more involvement. We need to be prolific not in how much we write, but in the effectiveness of our communication with decision makers, those affected by our work, and the world at large.

We need to put more effort into the usability of our communication with the world. Think Wordpress, Blogger, twitter, pinterest, Google+, flickr, picaso, Amazon, LinkedIn, Experience Project, e-petitions...as well as letters, magazines, and face-to-face, of course. None of us has 'time' for this, except the time that we prioritise for it. As Jon mentioned, raising awareness isn't just a job for the IEHF. It is for all of us to ensure that our research and practice remains relevant to the world and has broad impact. 

Steve Shorrock

Using the Safety Culture Discussion Cards: Tips from a user

I have received some great practical tips (and considerations for the future) from an ATC Safety colleague who had used the Safety Culture Discussion Cards with several different groups. Thanks to Alfonso Barba Martínez (Head of Regional Safety at AENA, the Spanish Air Navigation Service Provider) for the tips below!

Basically, I find it essential to make an introduction to the aims of the cards and the different ways to use them. What I find could be an improvement is to introduce simple cues for those having to administer them as `facilitators´, because what we have been doing until now is introducing the product to those who can make a better use of it (Instructors, Supervisors, mid-management). This made me think that it might be useful to explain a bit further what the outcome of the cards can result in. So basically I would cue those administering the cards on:

a) Make sure who your audience is, and prepare specific cards for them on each element.
b) The cards are an excellent tool to insert into any meeting as an added practical activity, breaking frequently tedious expositions and offering some `brain refreshment´.
c) Don´t use the cards with more 10-12 people? Otherwise the discussion might drift away very easily.
d) Is anyone supposed to take notes? As facilitator I advised them I would be taking notes, and the different comments and views expressed allowed me to identify weak points in which future safety strategies may be focused on at local level: shifts, fatigue management, airport signaling.
e) Also, I would favour using Option 2 Safety moments at the beginning, as it is a lot easier to engage people in a straight forward discussion on just one item, two maximum.
f) In the `How to use this Cards´ section, Options 1 Comparing views, Option 3 Focus on... and Option 2 SWOT analysis don´t necessarily need to use all cards, but it sounds like you must. It all depends on time available and going through all of them should not be the objective.
g) Be careful with the card selection when mixing groups with different activity areas, i.e. Human Resource, Maintenance, ATS, Financial and again, have relevant questions prepared beforehand.

I hope this can be useful to you. As I say, it is mainly focused on the tasks by those presenting the cards to others who must deal with different audiences, and could perhaps feature as a card of its own at the beginning.

In the near future, I'll be blogging on each of the options for using the cards, and it would be great to hear of any other options for how the cards have been or could be used. In the meantime, you can read more about the cards (and download them all as a PDF via the link at the end of the page) here, and see the individual cards as images here.

Reading on the job: fatigue, boredom and distraction while underloaded

I have received a few queries asking for a view (or "the science") on reading during operational duty, particularly as a possible countermeasure against fatigue during nightshifts. This is in an air traffic control context, meaning reading while a controller on duty at workstation, but it would apply to many other safety-related contexts where people need to monitor.

This is a sticky issue. But it is the kind of issue where a human factors specialist is expected to give advice or at least some succinct guidance or points for consideration. This kind of query is rarely straightforward. The 'science', inasmuch as it is relevant, cannot be simply generalised from laboratories or other contexts, and there is rarely any possibility for controlled experiments to study the problem directly. So, is reading a suitable countermeasure against fatigue? Below are some of my thoughts on this issue.

The task of the air traffic controller, as with many other safety-critical roles, is increasingly visual with high demand for monitoring. Automated tools such as data link and conflict alerts are becoming more common. They usually do not have any associated audible alert or alarm and may not be expected or anticipated. As people naturally become more reliant on such automated aids for normal performance, the need for alertness is even greater.

But there can be fairly long periods of low activity. Reading during operational duty is fairly common during these periods. The motivation to read is one that we can all identify with. We have little tolerance for monitoring when understimulated, and naturally want to fill in the gaps with other activities. Stimulation is often at its lowest during a nightshift (particularly ~0200-0500), when we also experience heightened fatigue. In this scenario, reading may seem like a good idea to maintain alertness. 

But what are we really trying to combat via reading during periods of low activity? Most likely, we use reading to combat boredom rather than fatigue. Boredom is an unpleasant or even distressing state that we naturally wish to avoid. Reading can be stimulating (and effective to counteract boredom) but it can also be visually fatiguing (especially during night shifts). 

Reading, fatigue, boredom and distraction (Photo credit: Ani-Bee http://flic.kr/p/LaxT3 CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

There is then the issue of distraction. Reading may mean reading from paper (book, newspaper, etc), an e-reader, a smart-phone or a tablet. Reading itself is a primary distraction from operational information, but smartphones and tablets introduce secondary distractions from other applications, such as emails, instant messages, tweets, status updates, notifications, etc - many of which are designed (or can be set) to capture attention (e.g. via pop-up notifications or alerts). 

Reading feels like the most natural way to repel boredom and so maintain stimulation, but at the same time it can increase fatigue and distraction and decrease vigilance and alertness - a situational irony. 

Then there are the legal implications. In the case of a serious incident or accident, reading non-operational material when visual detection may be safety critical could be raised in court, because reading takes attention away from the primary task (e.g. radar monitoring). An argument could be made (ignoring the whole context of the work) that if the person were not reading, then a problem (e.g. conflict) would more likely have been detected. 

It is important to separate the problems of fatigue and boredom because the countermeasures are different. Fatigue requires rest and sleep. Boredom requires stimulation. But often they come as a package, in which case fatigue will usually trump boredom, as fatigue is so much more difficult to counteract without prior planning. A better way to manage fatigue during nights might involve more frequent breaks and scheduled napping, as well as a well-designed shift system (see a EUROCONTROL literature review and Hindsight  Issue 13 on fatigue).

Combating boredom on an operational level also requires frequent breaks - there is positive evidence that light exercise such as a brisk 10 minute walk helps increase arousal. Breaks are only a partial solution, though, because the problem is one of job and task design.While these are not easy to change, while working on position, other tactics might include more active visual scanning (as opposed to reactive scanning), and increasing workload (e.g. combining sectors, offering higher service levels), or rotating activities, tasks or roles (e.g. sectors, positions or non-operational work). A 1996 EUROCONTROL-sponsored research project examined monotony in ATC, and came up with a few recommendations (page 184), but these do not shed much more light on the matter. Note that some other 'common-sense' tactics, such as playing music, can also be counterproductive because of distraction. In the longer term, more strategies are available via personnel selection (some people have a greater tolerance for boredom) and task, job and technology design (for instance, auditory alerts to complement visual information during specified hours), but these options are of little relevance to current operations. 

So reading itself is probably not an effective countermeasure for fatigue while on duty, but we have to recognise that the desire to read indicates another problem that needs to be addressed: boredom. Until we are able to design the boredom out of jobs, it would be useful, then, to share the practical strategies used by different people in different organisations and industries to maintain alertness and vigilance, and fend off boredom, in real world safety-critical environments.

Breaks from operational duty and fatigue management

by Steve Shorrock

(Adapted from Hindsight, Volume 13, Summer 2011, pp. 68-69, EUROCONTROL)

Guidelines from Human Factors research for optimising human performance and reducing fatigue-related risks.

Breaks from operational duty are an important factor in the management of fatigue. But as highly committed and professional operational staff often perform several secondary tasks and activities – inside or outside the ops room – breaks can become a victim. Breaks seem to be used for a wide variety of activities. A controller once said to me that working through breaks was often necessary for him to complete his secondary role…in safety management. This tendency to use breaks to perform tasks that add to fatigue, rather than reduce it, can increase over time without being noticed. In the end it may seem like the normal way of working. It is too easy to forget that the important role of breaks in managing fatigue – visual, mental and physical – and of course in managing stress.

The issue of fatigue is a core issue in human factors. So what activities are acceptable from this point of view? Anyone with some exposure to the field of human factors will not be surprised to hear that there is no black and white answer. But some general guidelines can be offered from the research on fatigue and vigilance.

Let’s start by asking, what is the purpose of a break from operational duty from a human performance viewpoint? Operational tasks are often visually demanding, involving monitoring the outside view, the situation display, or other screen-based work. This work contributes to visual fatigue, even when you are not particularly physically fatigued. Operational work can also involve intense periods of typing, writing or other inputs. You may notice how this brings about feelings of tension in the hands, arms and shoulders. Similarly, the work can often involve static postures, and so more general physical fatigue or discomfort can result. In high workload periods, mental fatigue can build up. But low workload periods can seem even more mentally tiring, and it is during these times when vigilance can really suffer.

So breaks are needed to recover from a variety of demands and the needs from a break will vary. Depending on the operational activity, you may need to rest, or relax, or re-energise during the break. We could put break activities into three categories, and as there are no black and white answers, we’ll call these red, amber and green activities.

 Red activities 

There are some activities that we know (from research and common sense) should be avoided during breaks, or at least minimised. In particular, activities that increase visual or mental fatigue, or increase feelings of stress or pressure, can prevent recovery. Tasks that are likely to be stressful may cause worry or preoccupation and so can even affect your work before the break. In general, such activities should be done outside of break periods where possible. Activities that may fall into this category might include assessments, interviews, important reports, or even difficult conversations. But other types of work which are intense or particularly important are also best done outside of breaks. Managers and staff need to arrange additional time for such activities, where possible.

 Amber activities 

Many activities that are sometimes performed during breaks are often OK in moderation. These really depend on the operational activities before and after the break. In general though, activities should be reduced where they are similar in nature to the operational work, for instance visually demanding, involving a lot of manual inputs, or time-pressured. Let say you have had a very busy period involving high levels of concentration and lots of keyboard or touch screen work. It would make sense, during the break, to reduce or minimise time spent internet surfing or completing detailed computer-based administration. Similarly, if you have had a very busy session on duty, then the break is probably not the time to rush around doing other time-pressed activities. But if you have had a very quiet period, the same activities could help you re-energise. Where it is necessary to do activities that are similar, physically or mentally, to the operational tasks, it is advisable to take a reasonable period of ‘green time’ to recover before going back on duty.

 Green activities 

The best kinds of activities to perform during breaks are usually different to the activities undertaken while on duty. These ‘green activities’ will allow you to rest, relax or re-energise. They might include restful or relaxing personal time, social activities, or light exercise. They may be individual to you, but will certainly depend on the nature of the operational work. A period of ‘green time’ taken immediately before going back on duty, and preferably outside the ops room and away from a computer screen, will help optimise performance.

So when it comes to breaks from operational duty, changes in activity are the key to reducing fatigue-related risks.

Of course, how breaks are spent is only part of the picture. The timing and frequency of breaks are also important and, to a lesser extent, their duration. These broad guidelines would ideally be incorporated in an overall policy or risk management system for fatigue, including provisions for time to perform secondary tasks that may present a fatigue risk. Until then, perhaps managers and operational staff can put the guidelines into practice to help optimise human performance, and maintain safety.

Safety Culture in your Hands

(This article featured in The Controller - Journal of Air Traffic Control, April 2012.)

by Steve Shorrock, Human Factors and Safety Specialist, EUROCONTROL

Are safety issues raised by front-line operational/technical staff given appropriate priority within your organisation? Do you and your team incorporate lessons from incidents into your work? If you saw a colleague doing something you thought was risky or unsafe, what would you do?

These are questions about safety culture. They are just examples of the types of questions that are addressed in the EUROCONTROL safety culture programme for European air traffic management (ATM), which has been underway since 2003.

One thing that is clear from the programme, which involves questionnaires and workshops with operational and non-operational staff, is that controllers have very clear opinions about these sorts of questions. But a survey is fairly pointless without action and continued conversation about the issues that matter to those on the front line of safety.

To help the conversation, the EUROCONTROL Safety Culture Discussion Cards are a practical resource to aid real discussion about safety culture by any person or team within the air navigation service provider (ANSP) organisation, especially operational staff. This article gives you a brief overview of the cards. So what is the point of the cards?

They get people talking. The cards are designed to provoke discussion among both operational and non-operational staff, and have been used successfully with operational staff in safety culture workshops, as well as an aid to team resource management training. They do not give answers, but instead raise questions.

The cards build on what you know already. Operational staff already know about safety culture. They live it and feel it. So the cards build on this understanding. The cards do not use theoretical language. They have been designed and tested with controllers. But still, they are based on the EUROCONTROL approach, which has been used on around 20 ANSP surveys.

The cards help improve safety culture by encouraging discussions on ways to improve safety culture, inspiring action based on the outcome of the discussion.

The physical cards are printed in colour on A6 card (but may also be used digitally, e.g. on smartphones). The first few cards in the pack explain very briefly what safety culture is, show the organisation of the cards, and explain some possibilities for using the cards. Then, the discussion cards are sorted into eight elements:

• Management commitment
• Resourcing
• Just culture, reporting & learning
• Risk awareness and management
• Teamwork
• Communication
• Responsibility
• Involvement

Photo credit: Pamela Ocampo http://flic.kr/p/7xCRdu CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

There are several discussion cards for each element, and each discussion card is designed to catch attention with a photo and headline, raise questions and provoke discussion. There are 83 cards in total – 70 of these are the actual discussion cards, while the rest are explanatory (introduction, photo credits, disclaimer, etc).

So how are the cards used? The cards can be used in any way you can think of, but several ways have been tried. For instance to com-pare views: different individuals or teams sort cards into two piles: ‘What we do well' & ‘What we need to improve', then discuss the piles. Another way is to have 'safety moments: in a small group, take just one card and discuss the card for 10 – 15 minutes. Or have a small group choose a specific element, such as ‘Just culture, reporting and learning', and discuss each card in depth, eg. What and where is our ‘best practice' on this issue? Where do we need to improve? Etc. You could also organise the cards into pat-terns to show how the issues relate to one another in your organisation, unit or team.

You can use any number of cards, from one to the whole set – whatever works for you. Safety culture can seem abstract, fuzzy and hard to break down. The cards provide a way to discuss safety culture in a straightforward and practical way.

The pdf version may be viewed on smart phones and a low resolution version can be found here. For more information and to view the cards as jpeg files, see the SKYbrary article here. High resolution (English and French) print-ready versions are also available: contact steven.shorrock {at} eurocontrol.int.

Is Ergonomics a Scientific Discipline? No.

This is taken from the article "Head to head: Is Ergonomics a Scientific Discipline?", published in The Ergonomist, Newsletter of the Institute of Ergonomics and Human Factors, July 2012. It is a response to an article by the IEHF President Jon Berman in The Ergonomist, June 2012. The 'Yes' argument was made by Mark Young MIEHF.

by Steve Shorrock MIEHF

Jon Berman’s article in the June edition of The Ergonomist concerned ‘the research base’ and whether it is important for ergonomics to be a scientific discipline. This raises other questions about the nature of science and science communication, the reality of ergonomics practice, and what else characterises our work.

The problems that many practitioners face on a day-to-day basis are usually not problems of science – they are problems of craft and engineering. Many are socio-political in nature. For practitioners working with complex sociotechnical systems, they might include how to gain management commitment to change, how to gain and utilise end-user involvement and input in projects, how to align HF activities with a system engineering or regulatory context, how to balance a change (e.g. a new shift pattern) with its social effects, or how to integrate new interfaces with multiple legacy controls and displays. Some of these issues rest on some scientific knowledge. But for most practitioner needs, the requisite ‘scientific knowledge’ is already there – and has been for years.

The continual enlargement of the scientific research base serves the needs of researchers far more than the needs of practitioners. If I were to take our own journal Ergonomics, then only 10% of articles (maximum) are, or have ever been, relevant to (part of) my practice in complex systems. The same goes for most other journals in our field. For many practitioners the scientific research has clear relevance to initial training, but subsequently diminishing relevance to practice. Even if the topic is relevant, the practitioner needs to access to the research, then consider the representativeness of the tasks, environment and people, think about multifactorial effects, account for publication bias and duplication of reporting, pick out the key implications, and so on. Scientific research in ergonomics, as published, is not ergonomic: it is not designed for those who can best influence the design of real systems – practitioners and policy makers.

Science informs ergonomics, but does not define it – at least not in isolation. Ergonomics is better described as a design discipline that draws on scientific and experiential knowledge. In practice, factors that seem to relate more closely to the effectiveness of ergonomics include empathy, interpersonal and helping skills, design and systems thinking, and understanding of people, technology, organisations and industry. Relevant and useful science clearly has an important role to play in the research base of ergonomics, but craft and engineering play at least equal roles in defining ergonomics in practice.

Human factors research and practice - Part 2: bridging the gap

This article by Steve Shorrock and Amy Chung was published in The Ergonomist (newsletter of the Institute of Ergonomics and Human Factors), March 2010. It is reproduced here to give more open access and to encourage further conversation on this issue.  Part 1 is here. The full article in the journal Ergonomics is at http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00140139.2011.568636 (ask me for a preprint).

In the last article we outlined some of the quantitative findings from our survey of 587 practitioners regarding the application of ergonomics and human factors (E/HF) research. We concluded that the research practice gaps could be reduced by addressing a number of factors associated with the research, the organisation, and individual practitioners and researchers. In this Part 2, we report on the respondents’ top suggestions for how practitioners and researchers could improve research application. Respondents made 733 suggestions for practitioners and 781 suggestions for researchers. Below, we identify the top 5 suggestions for practitioners and researchers.

How practitioners can improve research application

1. Increase collaboration and communication between E/HF researchers and/or practitioners and increase contact, conferences, networking and association. Many of the suggestions concerned the relevance of the research focus to the ‘real world’. Typical comments included: “need to communicate real-world problems to researchers so that solutions can be researched”, “communicate the voids in research (as applied to the real world), perhaps in Letters to the Editors”. Other suggestions concerned a more collaborative working relationship, with suggestions such as “practitioners in research laboratories” and “researchers on the project team to provide strategic oversight”. One suggested “links with a research group that share your basic approach and philosophies”, while another suggested that practitioners “consult researchers using helpdesks”. Finally in this category were suggestions for more crossover workshops, dissemination clubs, and forums for discussion of current research.
2. Read more and be more aware of the research, including more time to read research at work. Many respondents suggested that time to search literature should be built into projects. But several commercial conflicts were noted: “it’s hard to find the time if you work in consultancy; time is money and so if you commit to searching out and then reading papers they had better be good and useful (and a lot are not)!” Some respondents suggested seeking articles for a specific task/ job, but others hinted that this did not meet their needs (e.g. “figure out an easier way to monitor and filter research as it is published instead of searching for it when specifically required”). Some respondents suggested linking reading to personal development planning. 
3. Promote or obtain better awareness, support, cooperation, permission and authority for research application from decision makers, stakeholders, colleagues, organisation, Societies, other disciplines/ professions and public. One respondent suggested that “practitioners need to educate their customers and ‘translate’ research into everyday English for their customers to aid buy-in of its application”. Another noted that “more industry applications should be based on specific literature; clients should start looking for more than just a guru that says he knows what to do and should insist on evidence”. Other suggestions concerned allied professions (“feed HF into the tools and techniques other technical specialists use and own; translate our discipline into their language!”), and users (“make sure you have a strong link with operational people”). 
4. Provide more appropriate application of research findings to real problems. Several respondents argued for an evidence based approach (“seek evidence for their interventions – don’t just follow fads”). Another set of suggestions promoted more publishing of application (“provide real world application results in published work”). Other respondents suggested more collaborative application, such as “a mentor coaching relationship with researchers to help find solutions and test ideas”, or “researchers involved in the application environment.” However, several comments indicated that the horse should come before the cart. One respondent warned that practitioners should “address real world problems rather than invented abstractions.” Another stated they should “identify the problem, then identify the solution. Don’t go looking for places to make the research fit.” 
5. Carry out more research and publication, including replicating or extending research, addressing conflicting results and methodologies and specific themes or topics of research. Several of these emphasised relevance (“write more about ‘real/applied’ problems in practitioner/professional literature, so that researchers can keep up to date with current applied challenges.”) Many of the respondents suggested that practitioners publish case studies showing successful application. However, several highlighted the lack of outlets to do this (“this is a huge problem as practitioners don’t have a venue to do this”).

How researchers can improve research application

1. Ensure the research focus and methodology is more applied, real-world, relevant, germane, practical and generalisable to organisational environment. Many comments concerned the research focus: “focus research efforts on immediate HF problems relevant to industry”; “understand the needs of practitioners in real industrial environments and aim research at solving real problems”. Respondents frequently mentioned the external validity of methodology, especially the need for more field studies and more representative participants (“more in-situ studies; there is a difference in how people behave at work and in a laboratory”; “stop using simulators as the only means of data gathering”). 
2. Increase collaboration and communication between E/HF researchers and/or practitioners; increased contact, conferences, networking and association. Many of these had a dual focus on realism (“listen to industry about what research is required instead of deciding what is interesting!”; “by asking practitioners where they think the gaps are in research to back up their practice”). Others focussed on the need to collaborate with regard to outputs (“engage with industry working groups to tailor publications that educate without patronising, i.e. understand that the applied world is not the research world”; “researchers should work together with practitioners on ergonomics projects and stop sitting in their offices publishing loads of theoretical papers”). 
3. Form more definitive conclusions, and clearer implications, recommendations or applications when reporting. These suggestions were more focussed on the need to provide implications (“describe the outcomes in terms of tangible implications for practitioners”; “provide pragmatic recommendations, guidelines or applications when summarising their research findings”). One focused on the need for “better abstracts” and “clear articulation of ‘so what’ in human language”. Other respondents lamented “silly one-paragraph impact statements” and conclusions indicating that “further research is necessary”. 
4. Report text and statistical analyses in a different format (e.g. web, magazines, practitioner journals, society publications, summaries, database, email alerts) or in native language. These respondents suggested such alternative non-journal media should be used for “snippets” or “practitioner-friendly versions”. Coupled with the barrier that many practitioners don’t have time to read academic articles, such alterative formats may help uptake of research application if presented “in a form that industry can use”. 
5. Report text and statistical analyses in a more understandable, clear and readable manner in journal articles. Respondents emphasised the need for writing “in plain English that can be understood outside of their industry” and “dropping the academic jargon”. One responded starkly that academics should “get out of their ivory towers and speak a language that HF people and non-HF people can understand instead of psychobabble”. Another advised researchers to practise what they preach: “Write to your audience, apply the principles of HF to the writing of the article.”

Research and practice are sometimes painted as cosier bedfellows than appears to be the reality in E/HF. This work has highlighted the gaps and bridges between research and practice, but it is up to us to build and cross the bridges. We hope that the data derived from this study may spur motivation for more applicable research and more research application.
This article reported just the top suggestions for improved research application. What more can researchers do to improve application? What can practitioners do to turn theory or research findings into real world application?