E-learning, Webinars and Other Resources

HSA E-learning course: Introduction to Human Factors

This 20-minute course, Introduction to Human Factors*, promotes the importance of designing work for people, and how this enables them to work safely, healthily and effectively. The course is designed for health and safety managers, supervisors, safety officers, safety representatives and policy makers in all sectors of industry with a role in managing health and safety.

Learning outcomes:

At the end of this course you should be able to:

• define Human Factors and outline its benefits,
• outline individual, job and organisational factors that influence performance,
• understand error and non-compliances and how to influence them,
• identify the legal duties of the employer relevant to Human Factors, and
• explain the relationship between Human Factors and health and safety in the workplace.

*Acknowledgment: This HSA e-learning course includes reference to HSE UK photographs and reports and therefore contains public sector information published by the Health and Safety Executive and licensed under the https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3/

Human Factors Webinars

• Optimising Performance, Minimising Error: The Role of Human Factors in Workplace Safety Webinar

This 1-hour webinar, in collaboration with the Health and Safety Executive UK, provided an introduction to Human Factors, common risks including errors and performance influencing factors and insights into Human Factors in HSE UK accident investigations.

• Influencing Safety Culture

This 1-hour webinar described safety culture in simple terms, the role of safety culture in workplace accidents and outlined key influences on safety culture.

• Fatigue-risk management and driving for work[starts at 46 mins within Driving for Work Webinar]

This webinar on fatigue risk management and driving for work, in collaboration with the Road Safety Authority, explained fatigue and driving risk factors and good practice in fatigue risk management.

Other Resources

European Agency for Safety and Health at work (2022) Ergonomics.Last accessed 18 February 2025.

Health and Safety Executive (1999) Reducing error and influencing behaviour (HSG48 Second edition), Health and Safety Executive. HSE Books.

Health and Safety Executive (2025) Introduction to Human Factors.Last accessed 18 February 2025.

Kirwan, Barry (1994) A Guide to Practical Human Reliability Assessment. Taylor and Francis. London.

Norman, Donald A. (2013) The Design of Everyday Things. (Revised and expanded editions ed.). Cambridge, MA London: The MIT Press.

Reason, J (1990) Human Error. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.

Reason, J. (2008) The Human Contribution: Unsafe Acts, Accidents and Heroic Recoveries. Ashgate Publishing.

Shorrock, S. (2021) The Varieties of Human Work. https://safetydifferently.com/the-varieties-of-human-work/. Last accessed 18 February 2025.