Empowering Safety: The Intersection of HOP & EHS PART 1

Hilary: Hello, Elevate EHS podcast listeners. I’m back here again for another episode. I’m your host, Hilary Framke, here talking about all the things to elevate our EHS programs. I’m excited about this episode. I’ve got LaRhonda Julien here with me. Hi, LaRhonda.

LaRhonda: Good morning.

Hilary: LaRhonda is a non classic guest. We’re starting to like delve into some other functions and areas of interest. We’re going to be talking a lot about human and organizational performance today or HOP. So you’re going to hear that acronym a lot, listeners, on this episode. But I won’t take any of LaRhonda’s thunder.

I’m going to pass it off to you, LaRhonda. Tell our listeners a little bit about yourself. 

LaRhonda: Sure thing. As Hilary said, my name is LaRhonda Julien, and I do work in a “non classic” industry, if you’re talking about EHS and HOP. I actually work for a utility in the construction department of that utility.

I have always worked in construction in some way or another. I started off in residential, moved on to commercial, like building strip malls and schools and restaurants, and now I am in the electric utility space. So my group at work, we actually are out there every day with contractors building substations and transmission lines and doing environmental compliance. And I’ve been at that company and in that role for about 17 years now.

I think I’m well rounded in the whole construction space. So hopefully I’ll be able to share some insights with you and your audience that will also translate to what it is that you do. 

Hilary: Amazing. I know that you will cause that’s why you’re here. I had the opportunity to chat with LaRhonda a little bit in prep for this call. So for those like me, who maybe aren’t familiar with HOP, could you give us an explanation of what it is? 

LaRhonda: In our prep call, you’re right.

We touched on something that may have been a light bulb moment for me. I don’t know, would probably be very crazy if it was, but those things happen, right? It is a science for me and it is a passion for me because I’m very passionate about not just the work that I do, but the people that I work with and making sure that they stay safe.

And you’re right. We do things every day that we don’t realize is a part of this framework. It’s a part of this concept. And when I started first rolling this out to my guys, that was one of the things that I told them. You’re already doing this. We’re just coming up with a nice little box and putting a bow on it.

Hilary: Yes! We’re giving it a name. 

LaRhonda: Yes. Giving it a name, it’s that thing. And in the work that I do, I do, business continuity. So I’m making sure that no matter what my guys are out there doing, that they have everything it is that they need to work safely, I do change management. Hey, something happens, we need to know how to respond to that. I am doing a human performance in the knowledge transfer which is very essential, because as an industry, we have some new people who are coming in who don’t yet have that knowledge, skill, ability, and other characteristics that my more mature or senior workers might have.

And then I’m working also with strategic planning and development for our resources. So I’m taking those human and organizational performance principles and applying it to all of those things. And to your point, that human performance itself, if we wanted to define it, the DOE version says, it’s a series of behaviors that are carried out to accomplish human performance itself. If we were relying on the DOE definition, is a series of behaviors that are carried out to accomplish a specific task or objective. I like to simplify that and say, that it’s an operational philosophy that leads to operational excellence, or it’s why we do, what we do, the way that we do it.

And I think simplifying it that way helps people to be able to grasp those concepts in the principles. And if we were talking about the principles, because whenever I do an education series or speak to people at a conference or a webinar, I like to define what human performance is as we just did.

And then I also like to talk to them about what those principles are so that we have a foundation that’s laid. So we understand everything that’s coming after. So you let me know when you’re ready for those principles. 

Hilary: Yes, I want to get to that. But, you know, what’s interesting, what I found right, LaRhonda and I recently attended the same conference, Community of Human Organizational Learning, or CHOL.

And what I found at that conference, which blew my mind, was that HOP is not new. It’s quite old, as it was the 30th anniversary of this conference. 

LaRhonda: Yes.

Hilary: And many of the topics. So why don’t you tell for our listeners, take us on that journey. How did HOP originate? What are some of the historical milestones that shaped its evolution?

LaRhonda: Sure. As you stated, the specific conference that we were at, it was the 30th anniversary of that particular conference. And yes, human and organizational performance has evolved over time. I like to take it all the way back to the 1800s, actually. A little bit more than 30 years ago. 

Hilary: A little further.

LaRhonda: Yeah. 

Hilary: Let’s go. 

LaRhonda: Back in the 1800s, there was this guy who a lot of us look at as the founder of industrial and organizational psychology. Now that’s important to me because my bachelor’s and my master’s is in industrial and organizational psychology. So I had the opportunity to study this particular individual and the work that he did.

Frederick Winslow Taylor, one of the founders of industrial organizational psychology was an engineer, and he studied how employee productivity throughout his career back in the 18, 19, early 20th centuries, how it impacted workers, how it impacted organizations. And he came up with a concept called scientific management.

And scientific management, there were four principles associated with it. The first one said that each job that we do should be carefully analyzed so that the optimal way of doing the task can be specified. So it’s not just, hey, Hilary, go out there and turn this widget or this cog. We need to know that all of these things are possible when you are working on this piece of equipment with a person who has a certain level of knowledge or understanding about the work and that equipment. 

Hilary: Okay. 

LaRhonda: The second thing that he came up with under scientific management was that employees should be selected or hired according to the characteristics and how they relate to that job that they’re doing.

So I wouldn’t say I’m going to put Hilary on this piece of equipment, but Hilary has never worked on that piece of equipment. So when you bring an employee in, you have a conversation with them about their education, their experience their skill set and then you place them in the proper place.

So it’s more than just getting a warm body in and assigning them to do something. They have to actually be qualified to do that thing. And then the third thing, which is what I tell a lot of my guys too and you heard me talk about knowledge transfer and things of that nature. You have to be trained to do this specific task in this specific environment.

So you might have worked on this piece of equipment on this job, in this place, but that specific piece of equipment may not perform the same way in this environment, in this place. So we want to make sure under that scientific management umbrella, that the employees are trained to do that job on that piece of equipment.

And then the final one said that employees should be rewarded for their productivity. So that it will encourage them to continue performing at that level. And when we talk about the HOP principles, you’ll see how those two things actually connect. But Frederick Winslow Taylor came up with those four principles back in the 1800s and in my humble opinion, that’s really how far human and organizational performance goes. If you then fast forward to the 1970s, 1980s, there were a lot of aviation incidents, a lot of us remember them. 

Challenger, a lot of plane crashes. NASA and the FAA and a lot of other organizations came together and they had this meeting to discuss how we’re going to prevent these things from continuing to happen.

And they came up with a concept called crew resource management. And there’s actually seven elements of crew resource management that says decision making is important, the leadership in that environment is important, the way you manage the resources, communication between the people in that environment.

How assertive each member of the team is, being able to adapt to changing conditions and being aware of what’s going on around you can help you to detect and eliminate any threats and reduce the possibility of any errors and keep people safe. So that was in the 70s and 80s, right? Crew resource management.

Then, I’m going to get you a little bit closer to home, right? If you go back to the 2000s, INPO, which is the Institute of Nuclear Power. They developed a human performance course reference. And then they followed that up with a reference manual. So 2002, 2006, they came up with those two publications. The DOE was like, hey, we kinda like that. We’re going to adapt that and come up with our own take on that. And they came up with the Human Performance Improvement Handbooks Volume 1 and 2 in 2009. And that is what a lot of people who now are beginning their HOP journeys are looking to develop their programs. 

Hilary: That’s so interesting. Thank you for taking us through that.

I think this has been, something that lives in the background for a while. This is not a new concept. It’s changed hands a few times. It’s had different terminologies as we get a little smarter and to infuse the modern world, I’m sure, as well. 

And I am a super huge geek. I think words are very important and what words you use are impactful. So I think it has changed hands a little bit, but overall, in your description and definition, right? It’s a science. It’s a way of looking at what leads to the best operational excellence and incorporating the human element, right?

 And how can we do that in a way that leads to our greatest success? So, let’s talk about some of the key HOP principles and tell us about what are the benefits to a business of adopting HOP?

LaRhonda: Sure. One of the things that you said that struck me, and reminds me of a quote that I love is we don’t want to change with the world, right? We want to be people who change the world. And I think understanding this and applying the different concepts can help us to actually change the world because we’re working safer, and we’re having those more predictable and more successful outcomes that you talked about. And yes, we can do that by knowing, first, the background. And then applying those lessons are the principles and there are five principles for human and organizational performance.

The first one says humans are fallible. I know. Spoiler alert. 

Hilary: We haven’t, we’re not going to edit this podcast episode and edit out all our mistakes. We should probably leave them right. That makes sense for this episode. 

LaRhonda: It actually does. Yes. And it might be a little bit of comic relief, too, but humans are fallible, and even the best make mistakes.

Principle number one. Principle number two says that error likely situations are predictable, manageable and preventable. Principle number three, organizational values influence individual behavior. And what that means is, and I’ll tell you in my environment specifically, our number one value is safety.

And we make sure that we reinforce that to everyone who comes through the door and on all of our projects every single day. So people knowing that our number one value is safety, that’s going to govern their behavior as they are working on our projects. Principle number four says that people achieve high levels of performance based on the encouragement and reinforcement that they receive from the leaders, the peers, and the subordinates.

So you remember when I talked about scientific management, that fourth principle of scientific management, super similar, almost the same as the fourth principle of human and organizational performance. So Hilary if you’re doing a great job. I’m not just going to say, Oh, hey, yeah, great job Hilary, walk away, pat you on the back.

I’m going to be like, Oh my God, Hilary when you did this, it had that outcome, and it was such a value to the organization in this way. Very good encouragement, whether it’s coming from the leader, one of your peers, or someone who might be working with or for you. High levels of performance can be achieved if you encourage people.

Number five, we can avoid those events that could be detrimental to the company or to the people, if we understand the reason that those events happen, and then we study them and apply the lessons learned from them, not just in that moment, but also in the future. So we don’t want to learn something today, and then next week we’re presented with that same scenario and we make that same mistake. We want to continuously apply and improve. 

Hilary: I want to dig into, we don’t have near enough time on this one episode. Tell the listeners right now, we will be back for part two, potentially part three. We’ll see how many rabbit holes we go down. But I specifically want to dig into just a couple of these, LaRhonda and talk through like the benefits of adoption.

Let’s talk through what benefits of adoption you’ve seen, let’s say for the fifth principle. So when a business takes the investigation part seriously about understanding the reasons that this occurred. And then adopting the changes sustainably to prevent it from reoccurring, not just in the safety realm, but maybe in other function as well.

Where do you see the benefits? 

LaRhonda: Safety is always number one, especially in my environment. I work for a high reliability organization. And what that means is that we perform very high hazard tasks repeatedly with very high levels of success. So learning from those events is of paramount importance because the safety of our people is number one to us.

The number one benefit when I am talking about human and organizational performance, there are other impacts again, not just on that individual, but on the other people that are out there with them. So their coworkers, contractors, any vendors, even any of our owners who might be out there, impacts the relationship that we have with them, because they know that we are working safely and that we’re applying these scientific and time tested principles when we are out on site. And then we get to continuously improve and us continuously improving also improves our reliability. So it means that we keep the lights on longer, right?

Which people definitely appreciate. And then if you look down the line at it, our budget, the cost, the quality of our work and staying on schedule, which is also important to our company leaders as well as our members, is also a result of that principle. 

Hilary: So overall, really, and that was my thought too, operational reliability for being able to get the same results over and over again in the future because you fix that process.

But resiliency, I would think as well for being able to combat, it’s okay if our employees come in tired or they come in distracted or they come in and, let’s say that they have something going on a conflict and that’s got them thinking about something else. Our process is resilient enough in its controls to combat those human factors, which might have contributed to an incident, had we not built something that was more resilient. 

LaRhonda: Correct. And those items that you just talked about, those are all in future episode, right? Those are all called human performance error traps. 

Hilary: Yeah

LaRhonda: And they fit within a model.

Some people call it the twin model. Some people call it the width model, but they fit within that model. And when we recognize any of the things that are in that model, we call them red flags, right? They’re error precursors. So we have trained our individuals to recognize them and to begin to address them so that we do get those desired or those safe outcomes.

If someone comes in and they’re sleepy, we recognize that, hey, we might want to send that resource home and replace it with another resource who is ready to work. If we have distractions on site, which we have a lot of. We have heavy pieces of equipment. We have people. 

Hilary: It’s loud. 

LaRhonda: It’s loud. 

Hilary: In the environment.

LaRhonda: Yes yes. It might be hot. It might be cold. We might have individuals from different places coming in. So lots of distractions. But if we can recognize and manage those effectively, then we have those safe outcomes. So that resilience comes in being able to identify what those issues might be, so that we can prevent any incidents from happening, and if we do see something ongoing or in place, we can correct that so that we can get back to that project or that work that we’re doing and get it done safely. So that resiliency comes in that being able to adapt to all of those things that might be happening in our environment.

Hilary: Yeah, and I would think, building up the system with redundancies so that, with the first principle, humans are fallible, so it doesn’t matter whether you recognize that someone’s distracted and you have a conversation with them, you seem distracted. Could you get focused, right?

Please sit and do this activity. Even if you do all these things, you walk away and that person can still be distracted. So I would think a big part of this, too, is bolstering the system and the process so that when an employee does fail, they’re able to fail safely.

LaRhonda: And fail safely. I definitely have to admit to you, Hilary, I don’t like those two words together in a sentence. 

Hilary: Let’s hear it.

LaRhonda: I think that it gives people a false sense of security. I can jump off this building because there’s going to be a net at the bottom and I won’t kill myself. I can fail safely.

I would rather them be more proactive and conscious about their behaviors so that we don’t get there. But if we do, to your point, we have organizational systems in place that can help us to mitigate whatever the effects of those incidents might be. 

Hilary: So it’s not a traumatic loss. It’s still a loss. 

LaRhonda: Yes. A little semantics maybe.

Hilary: No, I love it. This is what a podcast is about. I love when people disagree and that’s fine. Let’s hear it. I do support you. I can see why you don’t like those together, because I do agree. I think there’s a lot of that inside the safety industry. What I’ll often talk about is personal protective equipment and this idea of, this hazard exists in this area.

So let’s just put everybody in a personal protective equipment in this large space. And I’m very against that because I think there’s something to be said about training our employees about what is the most dangerous. And if I have to put on let’s say chemical gloves up to here and a chemical apron and huge goggles and a face shield, my body immediately my mind knows what I’m about to do is high hazard because of the protections that I have to don in order to do this work.

But if there’s no risk and I’m being asked to put on protection, it creates this false risk knowledge. And now I don’t even know why I have to wear it. And then, why are we surprised when we walk around and people aren’t wearing it? Because they’re saying to me, I don’t know why I have to wear safety glasses, nothing ever spills, nothing splatters, nothing flies up.

I’m not sure why I have to wear them. And my answer to them is, yeah, I don’t get it either. So it’s because of that one area, but because they don’t want to walk around and deal with that area, they just put everybody in it. I think this is a mistake. So it’s this idea of, you wreck that kind of risk assessment that occurs in the human brain when you employ controls that are unnecessary. So we should fix our controls, do the work, analyze the risk, put the controls where they need to be. And even better than PPE is an engineering control people like we should be working PPE out of business, if we’re doing our jobs right.

LaRhonda: And what you’re talking about is the hierarchy of controls, right? And when you talk about the hierarchy of controls, your PPE is always last. And a way that we show people that visually is by using James Reason’s Swiss cheese model. So we have all of those controls in place, right? We have those administrative controls.

We have those organizational controls. We have individual controls. So for my people, we might have contracts. We might have prints. We do have the PPE. We have the training. We have all of those controls in place. However, if you remove one of those elements, you’re poking a hole in the cheese. And eventually, it’s going to line up just so that you are going to be left there with that individual standing in that PPE that they may or may not still remember what it’s for, and they’re going to have to make a decision.

And have you shored up that individual in the system well enough so that decision will not be traumatic to the organization or that person. 

Hilary: Yes. So much that we miss is having this conversation about why these decisions have been made. And walking employees, bringing them on this risk assessment. It’s not for nothing. The reason this is chosen and the reason that we put this control in place, like you said, whether it’s a SOP administrative control process or it’s personal productive equipment, or it’s some type of light curtain or interlock is for this risk. 

LaRhonda: That’s right.

Hilary: It’s your job personally to check it, to check its effectiveness, to make sure that it’s in correct service, and it’s running an operation on the way that it should be. And I’m continually shocked at how many employees don’t take on that personal ownership of the controls that are meant to keep them safe, right? 

LaRhonda: It goes back to the principles. We realize that people may not enforce these 100 percent of the time. But we can make sure that we’re providing them with that encouragement, that we’re providing them with that leadership and support, that we are sharing with them what the risks are, and that we’re bolstering our systems in a way that if they, willfully or not, have an accident or incident on site, it won’t be something that is going to be life changing for them.

Hilary: Yeah, it’ll be a little less. What are the biggest challenges that you see in organization? I know from my own experience, these are very tough principles to bring on board with some organizations, depending on where they’re at with the maturity, what type of leadership they have, their understanding context behind some of these ideas.

What do you think is the biggest obstacle?

LaRhonda: I have several. Strap on in

Number one, and people may disagree with this and that’s okay. Like you said, that’s why we’re here. 

That’s right.

Is attaching it to safety and people thinking that human and organizational performance is the same as safety. It is not. Human and organizational performance is a proactive thing that you do so that you won’t have to apply or employ safety.

So that’s usually my number one rub where they’re like, Oh, that’s the same thing as safety. We’re already doing that. Or whatever they might say. My second thing would be people don’t often know where to put it in the organization oh, yeah, this sounds great, but it doesn’t belong here.

It doesn’t belong there. What do we do with it? 

Hilary: It’s one of those Island of Lost Toy topics. Business continuity is a great example. No one knows where to put it. Who should own this because it’s inherently cross functional. It benefits the entire organization. So every function is like, well it’s not just me.

It’s not just me. So why do I have to take it? 

LaRhonda: And then buy in from the leaders and the workers, like you were saying. And the way that I, a lot of times, overcome that is when I’m delivering information, no matter what it’s about, I might be talking about doing a pre job safety briefing and absolutely applies to my people out in the field building substations and transmission lines. We want to make sure that we discuss this work.

What’s the scope? What equipment are we going to have out here? What resources do we need? What are the hazards? They understand it, but my people in office, maybe somebody in accounting might be like that’s something that people do in the field that doesn’t apply to me. And I say, yeah it does.

What if you’re getting ready to do an audit? Don’t you want to sit down with your people, decide who’s going to work on what part of that? That’s just like doing a pre job safety briefing. And then I tell my people, don’t just apply this at work. This also applies at home. This needs to be a very holistic adoption of this because, let’s just say you’re going on vacation.

It’s summertime, right?

Yeah.

Do your pre job safety briefing. Do I have my medications? Do I have all the kids toys? Did I pack my bathing suit? Do I have my plane tickets? Did I make my hotel reservations? That’s your pre job safety briefing. I am able to overcome some of those obstacles by establishing the relevance in each part of a person’s life and in all the work that we do.

Hilary: Oh my gosh, I love this so much. This is something that I did a lot of in my career, but didn’t know it was necessarily intersecting with HOP. But if we can bring relevance, real world relevance to activities that we’re asking, employees to do in the workforce, right? And we can make these metaphorical similarities. It helps people understand. It helps them comprehend and do some of that knowledge transfer you were talking about by not being so up in the weeds and technical or saying, this is just a compliance requirement. So this is how it’s prescribed. And here’s what we have to do and not connecting it to the world.

That’s right.

 That they understand why this is was written, and I think we don’t talk about this enough, not just EHS industry, just in business. We don’t talk about enough the value of these activities, what we’re going to gain from spending the time doing a pre job safety brief and how that’s going to make us more efficient, how that’s going to ensure that the controls and protections are in operation and resilient. All these things, right?

We don’t talk through the benefits of it. We just say, here’s what you got to do and here’s how, bye. 

LaRhonda: And there’s ways, again, future episodes to combat all those things too, because talking about commitment versus compliance, definitely one of my jams, right? This is the procedure.

Okay, why do we do it this way? This is not the way I’ve been doing it, right? So you’ve got that complacency. You have people making assumptions about how confident they are and their abilities and the work that they can do. So all of those things just factor in to the challenges that we’re already trying to overcome.

But if you have that consistency in the messaging, so everybody’s hearing that same message from those same individuals. And I usually do it as a hybrid approach. So I have my leaders to deliver certain messages. And then I have my folks who are my frontline workers or my boots on the ground, who are actually doing the work.

I share a message with them too. And we come together on that and that contributes to our success because you can’t just have somebody at the top shaking their finger and saying, do this thing. And you can’t have all the people who are doing the work saying, no, I don’t want to, why do I have to do this?

It doesn’t make sense to me. It makes it so hard. I could skip five steps if I do it this way. So having that collaboration definitely is important and it helps us to get to more sustainable results. 

Hilary: This is a common theme. This has come up now in a few podcasts. If I have listeners who are watching every episode and if that’s you, please comment so I can thank you. Socializing ideas. This is a continuing theme.

LaRhonda: Okay, last thing when you talk about challenges, establishing metrics. The leaders, if they’re going to implement this program, and program is a bad word. We don’t like to call it a program. But a lot of times in order to get that buy in from the top, we have to say that it’s a program, and with a program, they want metrics.

And the workers can find it very challenging to establish what those metrics are in such a way that the leaders continue to, or even the other workers, support it. So metrics and establishing metrics, another one of the great challenges associated with human and organizational performance. 

Hilary: Oh, not just HOP girl.

LaRhonda: Okay. 

Hilary: Establishing metrics in EHS. A constant struggle as well. Especially ones that really do move the needle. This has been an absolute pleasure, LaRhonda. Thank you so much for part one. We will be back for part two. There’s just way too much more I want to dig into. We’ll pick up right where we left off.

We’ll talk about the intersection of EHS and HOP. Really talk about how could infusing HOP into your business absolutely accelerate and elevate your EHS performance. So I can’t wait to hear that back for part two. So thank you and we’ll see you soon. 

LaRhonda: Perfect. Thank you. 

Hilary: Bye.