The Learning Portal

The documents below are educational materials and guides designed to help companies better understand Safety Culture and Human and Organizational Factors. Check back regularly for updates.

How to use the portal

To improve understanding of safety culture and Human and Organizational Factors (HOF)
To help others learn about the CER’s approach to safety culture and HOF
As a handout during a safety moment
To start a conversation with a team about safety
As a guide to best practices when building, assessing, or enhancing safety culture and HOF

Safety Culture

Human and Organizational Factors

E-Learning Modules

Our commitment

The CER is committed to enhancing awareness and understanding of safety culture and Human and Organizational Factors (HOF) to support both safety and environmental protection.

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Safety Culture

What is safety culture? Culture influences what people see, hear, feel, and say. It influences the decisions and actions (behaviours) of people in an organization.

Why is it important? These behaviours ultimately drive safety outcomes and performance.

The regulatory priority for safety culture

Three inspection officers are onsite and speaking to someone. One is holding a map.

Read about real-world examples and why regulators prioritize safety culture.

Safety culture defence: Committed safety leadership

Canada geese flying in formation at sunset over a lake.

Understand the essential role leaders play in nurturing an organization’s safety culture and allowing it to take root and thrive.

Safety culture defence: Resiliency

Three pairs of hands cupping dirt and a small sprouted seed.

Find out how companies can recognize and contain new or changing threats, as well as learn and rebound from errors when they occur.

Safety culture defence: Vigilance

A woman wearing personal protective equipment bent over and looking at instrumentation on the worksite.

Learn how an organization must continually guard against potential threats by encouraging reporting of concerns and continual learning.

Safety culture threat: Normalization of deviance

A red arrow going straight is flanked by two arrows on each side that are turning outward.

Learn what can happen when a company normalizes the practice of deviating from accepted standard operating procedures.

Safety culture threat: Production pressure

A side view of the dates on a calendar with a few pins pushed into a few, one red and one white.

Learn what outcomes can occur when leadership prioritizes timelines and budgets over protection of people and the environment.

Safety culture threat: Tolerance of inadequate systems and resources

Understand the consequences of when organizations try to do too much with too little.

Safety culture threat: Complacency

A man leaning back in an office chair with his hands clasped behind his head.

Understand what can happen when an organization is overconfident in its safety system and fails to learn lessons from past events.

Safety Culture Assessment Guidance

A pipeline is being laid in a trench during construction and an offshore oil and gas installation is depicted.

Learn the basics about conducting a safety culture assessment.

Human and Organizational Factors

What is Human and Organizational Factors? Using a proactive approach, HOF provides concepts and methods to support the identification, evaluation, and management of socio-technical hazards.

Why is it important? Once understood, HOF can be used to mitigate related hazards and improve performance outcomes.

Systems Thinking: The Workplace System

Three different colored bubbles are overlapping representing (1) organizational factors (shown in blue), (2) task, technology, workplace factors (shown in orange), and (3) people and team factors (shown in green).

Learn about the workplace system and the different elements that interact to impact performance.

Local Rationality

A white circle is shown with a magnifying glass over the vignette of a person wearing a suit and hat. 7 smaller circles surround this circle. The smaller circles depict: a human head with gears where the brain would be; a circle of interconnected lines; three stick figures standing together; a stick figure in front of interconnected line segments; a target sign; a stick figure head with a rectangle over the eyes; and a snapshot of a mountain.

Work as imagined is often different than work as done. Learn how this can introduce new risks in the workplace system.

Performance Variability

A graph is displayed on a white circle with a straight, horizontal blue line (representing work as imagined) behind a zigzagging green line (representing work as done).

Learn how decisions and actions are shaped by a person’s interpretation of the context in which they work.

Just Culture

A balanced legal scale is displayed on a white circle.

Learn why a workplace system should balance the need for accountability with the need for fairness and learning.

Demands & Pressures

Blue, orange and green circles intersecting inside a large white circle. In the center of the blue circle is a small white circle in which we can see the icon of a building. In the center of the orange circle appears a small white circle with the icon of a power symbol inside. In the white circle inside the green circle are the silhouettes of three people. Two white arrows point to the middle of the large white circle.

Learn how demands and pressures from within and without can impact the work system and performance outcomes.

Resources Constraints

Learn how resources and constraints can affect the work system and performance results.

Trade-offs

Icon – Silhouettes of two people facing each other, each pulling on a rope in tug-of-war style.

Learn how resources and constraints can affect the work system and performance results.

The 7 Principles of HOF

Individual hands of various ethnicities hold puzzle pieces in an effort to form a unified whole.

A single file containing all seven HOF principles.

E-Learning Modules

A series of self-directed e-learning modules focusing on Safety Culture (SC) and Human and Organizational Factors (HOF). Utilizing an interactive e-learning video format, we offer employees and leaders the opportunity to learn anytime and anywhere.

What is Safety Culture?

Why is Safety Culture Important?

How to Observe and Improve Safety Culture

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The 7 Principles of HOF

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Complex Systems

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HOF in Your Workplace

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