Under the guidance of the Energy Institute (EI) Human and Organisational Factors Committee, a new free online training course has been launched to help in understanding how human factors influence performance as a key aspect in preventing and mitigating major accidents within industry.

The Human factors awareness course is based on key topics identified by the UK’s Health and Safety Executive. Each module covers an introduction to the human factors key topic; problems and issues linked to that topic; the causal factors that make these problems and issues more likely; possible solutions; real examples and case studies where applying human factors has been beneficial; and assessment questions to test learning.

The course is interactive, providing links to other useful websites and videos. Each module takes around 30 minutes to complete, saving progress, enabling users to return to the course at a later date.

The training is aimed at building awareness of human factors and is intended for those whose work may impact safety, whether directly through their work, or through managing people. On completion of the course, users should be able to identify human factor issues and their potential impact on safety, and understand the range of approaches and solutions that are available to manage these issues.