Network Meeting – What can the discoveries of neuroscience teach us about improving safety performance
PRESENTER:
Cristian Sylvestre, HabitSafe
Topic:
What can the discoveries of neuroscience teach us about improving safety performance
Safety performance, whichever way we look at it, has been stagnant for more than 15 years in Australia, US, UK and other countries. This is even though we manage safety better and do more for safety than ever before.
Yet, we persist doing what we have always done. Although good to do, this is not enough to prevent many incidents today, even serious ones.
So, what else could there possible be?
As it turns out, quite a lot.
The discoveries of neuroscience show that people can learn to be safer and prevent many incidents of varying severities. But to do so, they need to understand how inattention comes about and what could be done to minimise it. Even being a little more attentive can be the difference between a glancing blow and a direct hit.
Now that we understand better (thanks to neuroscience) how our brains actually work, people can be trained and skilled to be more attentive. This is not just about caring, providing knowledge or targeting safety to be front-of-mind. This is about working with people’s subconscious mind, the part of the brain where most behaviour originates.
About the speaker:
Cristian’s 30-year safety career started in chemical manufacturing and then moved to the oil and gas industry. In this heavy processing and complex environment, he quickly learned that there are different types of safety that need to be dealt with differently.
As a professional chemical engineer and having worked as a process safety engineer, he is trained to analyse complex problems and use evidence-based science to deliver the simplest solutions that achieve positive safety outcomes.
His main field of interest is how inattention impacts personal safety, at work and elsewhere. Research shows inattention is in play in 95% of incidents, even serious ones.
About 20 years ago, he got interested in neuroscience and wrote a book “Third Generation Safety: The Missing Piece – Using Neuroscience to Enable Personal Safety” to help people understand how inattention comes about and what can be done to minimise it.