human factors

Loss of Control:

• Factors include road conditions, narrow lanes, and inattention. Speed is a critical variable affecting the likelihood of control loss. Human factors solutions to the problems of control loss come in several varieties. Naturally any feature that will keep vision directed outward will be useful, as will anything that will prevent lapses of attention (e.g., caused by fatigue). Correspondingly, wider lanes will lessen the likelihood of control loss. Speed is such a critical variable (increases the likelihood of control loss, decreases the probability that a hazard will be detected in time, increases the distance traveled before a successful avoidance maneuver can be implemented and increases the damage at impact); hence, speed limits that are adjusted for the curvature of the road can help. Any factors that reduce the apparent sense of speed (quieter engines, higher seating position above the ground, less visible ground texture) will lead to a bias to overspeed. Equally important to the perceptual biases but less easily quantifiable are the cognitive biases that can lead to overspeeding. Such biases are induced by the driver's feeling of overconfidence that hazards will not suddenly appear or that if they do, they will be able to stop in time; that is, overconfidence yields an underestimation of risk. Most critical are any feedback devices that provide the driver with natural intrinsic feedback of high speed. Visible marking of lane edges (particularly at night) will be useful.

Hazard Detection:

• Effective hazard detection involves quick perception-reaction times, typically 2-4 seconds, with design considerations for improving reaction times.

Compliance:

• Lower speed limits are proven to enhance safety, reducing fatalities significantly. However, public pressure in the U.S. led to an increase in speed limits, resulting in a 10-16% rise in fatalities.
• Effective enforcement of speed limits can of course make some difference. While "scare" campaigns about the dangers of high speeds are less effective than actual compliance enforcement, a more positive behavior-modification-technique that proved effective was based on posting signs that portrayed the percentage of drivers complying with speed limits.

Protective Devices:

• Mandatory use of collision restraints like seat belts and airbags significantly reduces fatality risk. Enforcement of these laws increases compliance and safety.
• Studies show that rewarding drivers for wearing seat belts can be more effective than punitive measures, leading to lasting behavioral changes.

Sensing:

• Rear-end collisions, a significant cause of accidents, can be mitigated by high-mounted brake lights and systems that signal impending braking to following drivers.
• Active sensors that alert drivers to high closure rates with the vehicle in front can improve response times and prevent collisions.

Cognitive Factors in Driving:

• Expectancy plays a crucial role in driver perception. Standardizing roadway layouts and signage helps drivers anticipate and respond to driving conditions.
• Positive guidance through effective signage reduces the likelihood of hazardous maneuvers.
• Risk perception is often underestimated by drivers, leading to faster driving and reduced safety margins. Education on the actual risks can improve driver awareness and safety.

Risk Homeostasis Model:

• This model suggests that drivers maintain a constant level of perceived risk. Safety features might lead to riskier driving behaviors, negating safety benefits.
• However, some safety features, like widening highways, consistently improve safety by reducing crash likelihood and severity.

Fatigue:

• Fatigue and alcohol significantly impair driving abilities. Solutions include mandatory rest breaks for truck drivers, "fitness for duty" tests, that can be required of long-haul drivers at inspection stations or geographical borders  and potential future solutions like driver monitoring systems.
  • Driver monitoring systems: can monitor parameters both within the vehicle (e.g., steering behavior) and within the driver (e.g., blink rate, EEG) and can then infer a pending loss of arousal. Following such an inference, the system could alert the driver accordingly via an auditory warning.

Alcohol:

• Alcohol significantly impair driving abilities. With blood alcohol content as low as 0.05%, drivers react more slowly,are poorer at tracking, are less effective at time-sharing, and show impaired information processing
• Solutions include enforcing DUI laws, "social norming, which is changing the way in which society views drinking and driving and interlock systems (behind-the-wheel tests that must be accomplished by the driver to a certain performance criterion in order to allow the vehicle to be started or driven).

Age-Related Factors:

rivers may lack skills and have overconfidence, while older drivers may have slower response times and reduced visual capabilities.
While the younger (particularly male) driver presents a greater hazard to oth- ers on the highway, in contrast, the increased accident (and fatality) rate of much older drivers is only a hazard to them and not to others on the highway.

• The safety hazards presented by the younger driver may be addressed, in part, through legislation and effective enforcement. For example, the only state to raise the minimum driving age to seventeen (New Jersey) receives a corresponding benefit to traffic safety (as do most European countries in which the age minimum is eighteen), and increases in the minimum drinking age in this country has been associated with a significant 13 percent reduction in driving fatalities
• The issue of how to address the safety hazards imposed by the older driver is a more difficult one. Clearly, the requirement for more frequent driving tests above a certain age can effectively screen the age-impaired driver, and yet because they adopt a compensating conservative behavior described above (drive more slowly, avoid darkness), many older drivers who might fail performance tests would not show higher risk behavior on the road. At the same time, deprivation of independent vehicle mobility can severely degrade the quaöity of life of many older residents.

Driver Education:

• Training programs include both knowledge tests and behind-the-wheel training. However, evidence on their effectiveness in improving safety is limited.
• Simulator Training: Increasing attention is given to driving simulators for effective training, especially for emergency conditions.

Automobile automation includes components like collision monitors, automated navigation systems, and driver monitors, developed under the Intelligent Vehicle Highway System (IVHS). These technologies rely on advances such as the global positioning system (GPS) and intelligent roadway sensors for real-time location and traffic updates.

Intelligent Vehicle Highway Systems (IVHS):

• Technologies like collision monitors and automated navigation systems improve safety but require careful implementation to avoid over-reliance.

Key Automation Components:

• Collision Monitors: Detect the rate of closure with vehicles ahead and provide warnings.
• Automated Navigation Systems: Use in-vehicle computers and GPS for route planning.
• Driver Monitors: Track driver behavior and provide alerts for safer driving.

Issues with Automation:

• User Trust and Complacency: Over-reliance on automated systems may lead to drivers not monitoring the road adequately. In cases of system failure, drivers might react too slowly to prevent accidents. High reliability of automated systems might increase complacency, reducing driver vigilance.
• Attention Diversion: Secondary information systems (e.g., navigation aids) might divert attention from the primary task of driving. Displaying such information "head-up" can help, but it must be ensured that it doesn't obscure critical road views.

à While automation offers significant safety enhancements, it must be introduced carefully within a human-centered framework to avoid over-reliance and ensure that drivers remain engaged and attentive to the primary task of driving.

Safety and Efficiency:

• Comparative Safety: Public transportation (buses, trains, subways) is statistically safer than private vehicles due to better training and vehicle design.
• Environmental Benefits: Public transportation reduces pollution per passenger mile compared to personal vehicles.
• And sometimes it is sometimes much more efficient to take public transportation than to sit immobile in traffic jams during rush hour.

As a consequence of these differences in safety, efficiency, and environmental pollution, it is apparent that one of the important human factors issues in public ground transportation lies in the efforts to induce behavioral changes of the traveling and commuting public-making this segment of the population more aware of the lower risks, lower costs, and greater efficiency of public transportation. Equally important are systemwide efforts to improve the accessibility of public transportation by designing schedules and routings in accordance with people's travel needs, and so on.

System Design:

• User-Friendly Design: Effective public transportation systems require well-maintained infrastructure, efficient scheduling, and user-friendly design to attract more users and reduce road traffic.

Behavioral Changes:

• Encouraging Public Use: Efforts to make the public aware of the lower risks, lower costs, and greater efficiency of public transportation are essential.

Key Aspects of Pilot Tasks:

• Complex Multitask Environment: Pilots manage six degrees of freedom: pitch, roll, yaw, and three translational axes (lateral, vertical, and longitudinal). This involves maintaining airspeed and attitude to avoid stalling and navigating to precise points in 3-D space (4-D navigation in commercial aviation).multidimensional compared to driving.
• Situational Awareness: Maintaining awareness of hazards and the state of automated systems is critical.

• Navigation: Flying to specific points.
• Procedures: Following aircraft and airspace operation protocols.
• Communication: Coordinating with air traffic control and flight deck personnel.

Challenges in Piloting:

• Displays: Pilots must gather information from multiple instruments, unlike car drivers who primarily look ahead.
• Control Dynamics: Aircraft control involves higher-order systems and is more sluggish due to inertia, requiring anticipation and prediction to avoid instability.

Axis Interactions: Changes in one axis (e.g., pitch) affect others (e.g., airspeed), requiring a thorough understanding of flight dynamics

Workload Variations:

• Underload: Conditions like transoceanic flights.
• Extreme Overload: Situations such as military combat missions or flying in bad weather.

à These complexities make piloting a more demanding task compared to driving, with a higher need for managing various perceptual, cognitive, and response-related resources.

Display Design:

• Advanced Displays: Modern aircraft use integrated electronic displays and HUDs to provide critical information without diverting attention from the outside view.
• Proximity Compatibility: Displays are designed to provide the right information in the right form at the right time.
• Traditional flight instruments display critical information like airspeed, pitch, and bank but do not always directly indicate critical states like nearing a stall. Pilots need to frequently shift their gaze across various instruments to gather necessary information, unlike car drivers who mainly look ahead.
• Display Innovations: Modern displays incorporate human factors principles:
  • Proximity Compatibility: Information is grouped by relevance.
  • Moving Part and Pictorial Realism: Displays are designed to be intuitive.
  • Advanced displays provide prediction and preview features, aiding in anticipating future positions and commands. However, 3-D displays, while promising, can introduce ambiguity in spatial judgment.

Crew Resource Management (CRM):

• Teamwork and Communication: CRM training programs focus on improving communication and decision-making among flight crews, reducing accidents caused by communication breakdowns.

Stress and Workload:

• Managing Stressors: Pilots face physical and psychological stressors. Training and simulation help manage these stressors and improve emergency response skills.

Automation and Safety:

• Supporting Pilot Performance: Automation, such as predictive displays, supports pilot performance but must be carefully managed to avoid over-reliance and maintain situational awareness.

Control Dynamics

• Aircraft control is more complex due to high inertia and higher-order dynamics:
  • Heading and Altitude: These are second-order tasks, where changes affect the rate of heading and altitude adjustments.
  • Lateral Position: This is a third-order task, more challenging due to delays in response to inputs.

à Pilots must predict and anticipate changes to avoid instability and oscillations in control.

Axis Interactions

• Aircraft dynamics involve complex interactions between axes:
  • Pitch Changes: Affect both altitude and airspeed.
  • Roll Changes: Intended for heading adjustments, also impact pitch and can increase stall risk.
• The skilled pilot must form a very accurate mental model of these flight dynamics to achieve effective control.
  • Conventionally, the difficult task of learning to control the aircraft has been addressed through many hours of training both in flight simulators and in the air to move the declarative knowledge of flight dynamics to effective procedural knowledge.
• Aircraft designers have been moving toward incorporating human factors display principles to design more "user-friendly" displays.  Given the sluggish nature of aircraft dynamics, a valuable feature on almost every advanced display is the availability of prediction (of future aircraft position) and preview (of future command input). Farther in the future and less well established in terms of its benefits is the implementation of 3-D displays

Maintaining Situation Awareness

Pilots need to maintain awareness of both external hazards and the state of automated systems. Effective display design is crucial for providing the right information at the right time:

• Head-Up Displays (HUDs): Allow monitoring without looking away from the outside view, though they must avoid clutter.
• Integrated Electronic Displays: Offer a broader view but must balance detail and precision to avoid reducing tracking accuracy.

Aircraft pilots must reliably execute a series of actions during flights. These actions can be routine (e.g., lowering landing gear, setting flaps) or contingent on unpredictable circumstances (e.g., closed runways, engine failures). Failure to follow procedures can be fatal, as demonstrated by the 1987 Detroit Metropolitan Airport crash, where neglecting to set the flaps led to a deadly accident.

• Checklists: Used to ensure all procedures are followed. Errors can occur due to top-down processing or distractions in a multitask environment. Due to the vast amount of procedural information (FAA Regulations, aircraft operating manuals), pilots cannot be expected to remember everything. To aid their prospective memory (remembering to do the right things at the right time), checklists are used. Checklists are extensive, covering different flight phases (preflight, taxi, takeoff) and operating conditions (normal, engine out, fire). Common error with checklists:
  • Top-Down Processing Errors: Under time pressure, pilots might "see" items in their expected state even if they are not.
  • Multitask Environment Distractions**: Distractions can cause pilots to skip steps in the checklist. Attention diverted by another task may return to the checklist at a later step, skipping the pending one.
• Human Factors Solutions to these errors:
  • Redundant Participation:
    • Involves two crew members verifying checklist items.
    • The "challenge and response" method: One crew member challenges the other to check an item and waits for a verbal response before proceeding.
  • Automation:
    • Automation can redundantly check and report the status of switches and tasks.
    • Electronic checklists may require pilots to actively confirm completion, ensuring monitoring of task status.

Teamwork in Piloting:

• Pilots operate as part of multiple teams:
  • Flight Deck Team: Collaboration with other flight crew members.
  • Air Traffic Control Team: Interaction with air traffic controllers managing their sector.
  • Onboard Mission Team: Coordination with personnel on specific missions (e.g., cabin crew, medical personnel, military operators).

Communication Importance:

• Communication, primarily via voice, is critical in aviation:
  • Incidents from Breakdown: Over half of flying incidents result from communication breakdowns.
  • Voice Communication Vulnerability: Errors can arise from both bottom-up and top-down processing.
  • Key Information Omissions: Failures often occur because essential information is not relayed, not just because of misheard statements.

Hierarchical Communication Challenges:

• Breakdowns often happen due to hierarchical dynamics:
  • Junior Crew Reluctance: Junior members may hesitate to point out issues to senior captains.
  • Senior Crew Responsibility: Senior members need to foster an open environment for information sharing.

Cockpit Resource Management (CRM):

• In response to these issues, CRM training was developed:
  • Training Components: Case studies of communication breakdowns. Simulated flight exercises with behavior critiques. Guidelines for fostering open communication and clear information sharing.
  • Guidelines: Emphasize assertiveness and clarity (e.g., direct statements about altitude).

Broadening CRM:

• CRM has evolved to include:
  • Wider Team Inclusion: Relevant for all teams, including cabin crew and air traffic controllers, as well as teams outside aviation (e.g., medical operating rooms).
  • Resource Inclusion: Covers all resources, including automated systems and the pilot's attentional resources.

CRM Effectiveness:

• CRM programs have proven effective:
  • Accident Rate Reduction: Significant drops in accident rates have been observed in organizations after implementing CRM programs.

Stringent Training and Licensing:

• Higher Standards: Training and licensing for pilots are much stricter compared to driving, reducing the prevalence of alcohol, fatigue, and age-related impairments.
• Perceived Risk: The higher perceived risk in flying contributes to these stringent requirements.

Physical and Psychological Stressors:

• Aircraft Environment: Loaded with potential stressors affecting performance both directly and indirectly.
• Student Pilots:
  • Psychological Stress: High risk of crashing increases stress, especially during early solo flights.
  • Cognitive Breakdowns: Stress can lead to breakdowns in information-processing skills, highlighting the need for extensive use of flight simulators for emergency training.

Other Stressors for Pilots:

• Military Pilots: Face combat danger, high gravitational forces, and physical restrictions.
• Light Aircraft Pilots: Prone to motion sickness and spatial disorientation, especially when flying in clouds.
• High Workload: Imposed on single pilots in bad weather, military pilots in combat, pilots before landing, and helicopter pilots on low-ground missions.
• Environmental Stressors: Vibration, noise, and heat can enhance physical stress, particularly for helicopter pilots.

Aircraft Automation

Forms of Automation:

• Autopilots: Assist with tracking tasks and reduce workload.
• Route Planners: Aid in navigation.
• Collision Avoidance Monitors: Enhance traffic and terrain monitoring.
• Flight Management Systems: Optimize flight paths for economic benefits (fuel conservation).

Human Factors in Automation:

• Many automation guidelines stem from accident analysis and research.
• Emphasis on human-centered automation to ensure safety and efficiency.

Role and Responsibilities:

• Air traffic controllers (ATCs) are responsible for managing the safe and efficient flow of aircraft through airspace, similar to industrial process control but with unique complexities:
  • Multiple Entities: Controllers manage multiple aircraft, each with dynamic interrelationships.
  • Conflicting Goals: They must balance safety (wide separation) with efficiency (high throughput of aircraft).

Types of Air Traffic Controllers:

• Tower Controllers: Manage aircraft on the ground, taxiing, takeoff, and landing.
• Terminal Radar Approach Controllers (TRACON): Control aircraft within 20-50 miles of airports using radar displays.
• En Route Controllers: Manage cross-country air traffic between TRACON areas, also using radar.

Control Process

• Verbal and Discrete Control: ATC uses verbal instructions or "clearances" to pilots, making voice communication critical.
• Inputs and Goals: Controllers aim to maximize traffic flow while ensuring safety through maintaining minimum separation between aircraft.
• Visual-Spatial Mental Model: Controllers interpret radar data, flight strips, and radio communications to maintain a "big picture" of the airspace.

System Sluggishness

• Delayed Response: Commands to aircraft (speed, altitude, heading) take time to manifest, necessitating prediction and planning.
• Predictor Displays: These aids help controllers anticipate future positions and potential conflicts.

Teamwork and Communication:

• Two Teams:
  • Controller and Pilots**: Ensuring coordinated actions.
  • Controllers at a Facility**: Handing off aircraft between sectors and providing mutual support.
• High Workload: The second source of difference from much of process control concerns work- load. Unlike process control, ATC workload is consistently high, with adaptive and maladaptive effects.

Safety and Efficiency:

• Redundancy and Professionalism: The ATC system is highly safe due to redundancy and skilled workforce.
• Pressure for Automation: There is ongoing pressure to automate ATC functions to improve efficiency and reduce delays.

Countermeasures

Whilst The Dirty Dozen list of human factors has increased awareness of how humans can contribute towards accidents and incidents, the aim of the concept was to focus attention and resources towards reducing and capturing human error. Therefore, for each element on The Dirty Dozen list there are examples of typical countermeasures designed to reduce the possibility of any human error from causing a problem.

1. Lack of communication
2. Distraction
3. Lack of resources
4. Stress
5. Complacency
6. Lack of teamwork
7. Pressure
8. Lack of awareness
9. Lack of knowledge
10. Fatigue
11. Lack of assertiveness
12. Norms

Poor communication often appears at the top of contributing and causal factors in accident reports, and is therefore one of the most critical human factor elements. Communication refers to the transmitter and the receiver, as well as the method of transmission. Transmitted instructions may be unclear or inaccessible. The receiver may make assumptions about the meaning of these instructions, and the transmitter may assume that the message has been received and understood. With verbal communication it is common that only 30% of a message is received and understood.

Detailed information must be passed before, during and after any task, and especially across the handover of shifts. Therefore, when messages are complex they should be written down, and organisations should encourage full use of logbooks, worksheets, and checklists etc. Verbal messages can be kept short, with the most critical elements emphasised at the beginning and repeated at the end. Assumptions should be avoided and opportunities for asking questions both given and taken.

Complacency can be described as a feeling of self-satisfaction accompanied by a loss of awareness of potential dangers. Such a feeling often arises when conducting routine activities that have become habitual and which may be “considered”, by an individual (sometimes by the whole organisation), as easy and safe. A general relaxation of vigilance results and important signals will be missed, with the individual only seeing what he, or she, expects to see. Complacency can also occur following a highly intense activity such as recovering from a possible disaster; the relief felt at the time can result in physical relaxation and reduced mental vigilance and awareness. This particular psychological experience is referred to as a Lacuna.

Whilst too much pressure and demand causes over-stress and reduced human performance, too little results in under-stress, boredom, complacency and reduced human performance. It is therefore important, when conducting simple, routine and habitual tasks, and when fatigued, to maintain an adequate, or optimum, level of stress through different stimulation. Always expect to find a fault! Following written instructions, and adhering to procedures that increase vigilance, such as inspection routines, can provide suitable stimulus. It is important to avoid: working from memory; assuming that something is ok when you haven’t checked it; and, signing off work that you are unsure has been completed. Teamwork and mutual cross-checking will provide adequate stimulus when fatigued.

The regulatory requirements for training and qualification can be comprehensive, and organisations are forced to strictly enforce these requirements. However, lack of on-the-job experience and specific knowledge can lead workers into misjudging situations and making unsafe decisions. Aircraft systems are so complex and integrated that it is nearly impossible to perform many tasks without substantial technical training, current relevant experience and adequate reference documents. Furthermore, systems and procedures can change substantially and employees’ knowledge can quickly become out-of-date.

It is important for employees to undertake continuing professional development and for the most experienced workers to share their knowledge with colleagues. Part of this learning process should include the latest knowledge on human error and performance. It should not be a taken as a sign of weakness to ask someone for help or for information; in fact this should be encouraged. Checklists and publications should always be referred to and followed, and never make assumptions or work from memory

Distraction could be anything that draws a person’s attention away from the task on which they are employed. Some distractions in the workplace are unavoidable, such as loud noises, requests for assistance or advice, and day-to-day safety problems that require immediate solving. Other distractions can be avoided, or delayed until more appropriate times, such as messages from home, management decisions concerning non-immediate work (e.g. shift patterns, leave entitlement, meeting dates, administrative tasks etc), and social conversations.

Psychologists say that distraction is the number one cause of forgetting things: hence the need to avoid becoming distracted and to avoid distracting others. Humans tend to think ahead. Thus, when returning to a task, following a distraction, we have a tendency to think we are further ahead than we actually are.

To reduce errors from distraction it is best to complete a task before responding. If the task cannot be completed without hurrying, then we can prominently mark (or, “lock off”) the incomplete work as a reminder to ourselves and anyone else who may complete the work. When returning to work, after being distracted, it is a good idea to commence at least three steps back, so that we re-trace some steps before picking up the task again. If necessary, having someone else double-check our work using a checklist may be appropriate and useful.

Management have a role to play in reducing the distractions placed on their employees. This may involve good workspace design, management of the environment, and procedures that create “safety zones”, “circles of safety” or “do not disturb areas” around workers engaged in critical tasks.

In aviation many tasks and operations are team affairs; no single person (or organisation) can be responsible for the safe outcomes of all tasks. However, if someone is not contributing to the team effort, this can lead to unsafe outcomes. This means that workers must rely on colleagues and other outside agencies, as well as give others their support. Teamwork consists of many skills that each team member will need to prove their competence.

Some of the key teamwork skills include: leadership, followership, effective communication, trust building, motivation of self and others, and praise giving.

To create an effective team it is necessary that the following issues, as appropriate, are discussed, clarified, agreed, and understood by all team members:

• A clearly defined and maintained aim, or goal(s)
• Each team member’s roles and responsibilities
• Communication messages and methods
• Limitations and boundaries
• Emergency procedures
• Individual expectations and concerns
• What defines a successful outcome
• Debriefing arrangements
• Team dismissal arrangements
• Opportunities for questions and clarification

A team’s effectiveness can also be improved through the selection of team members to reflect a broad range of experience and skill sets, and also through practice and rehearsal.

Fatigue is a natural physiological reaction to prolonged physical and/or mental stress. We can become fatigued following long periods of work and also following periods of hard work. When fatigue becomes a chronic condition it may require medical attention but, workers should never self-medicate! As we become more fatigued our ability to concentrate, remember and make decicisons reduces. Therefore, we are more easily distracted and we lose situational awareness. Fatigue will also affect a person’s mood, often making them more withdrawn, but sometimes more irrational and angry.

It is a human problem that we tend to underestimate our level of fatigue and overestimate our ability to cope with it. Therefore, it is important that workers are aware of the signs and symptoms of fatigue – in themselves and others. Fatigue self-management involves a three-sided programme of regular , healthy diet (including reduced use of alcohol and other drugs), and exercise. Work of a critical and complex nature should not be programmed during the low point on the body’s circadian rhytmn (usually 03:00 – 05:00am); and, when fatigued always get someone else to check your work.

If all the parts are not available to complete a maintenance task, then there may be pressure on a technician to complete the task using old, or inappropriate parts. Regardless of the task, resources also include personnel, time, data, tools, skill, experience and knowledge etc. A lack of any of these resources can interfere with one’s ability to complete a task. It may also be the case that the resources available, including support, are of a low quality or inadequate for the task.

When the proper resources are available, and to hand, there is a greater chance that we will complete a task more effectively, correctly and efficiently. Therefore, forward planning to acquire, store and locate resources is essential. It will also be necessary to properly maintain the resources that are available; this includes the humans in the organisation as well.

Pressure is to be expected when working in a dynamic environment. However, when the pressure to meet a deadline interferes with our ability to complete tasks correctly, then it has become too much. It is the old argument of Quantity versus Quality; and in aviation we should never knowingly reduce the quality of our work. Pressure can be created by lack of resources, especially time; and also from our own inability to cope with a situation. We may come under direct, or indirect, pressure from the Company, from clients and even our colleagues. However, one of the most common sources of pressure is ourselves. We put pressure on ourselves by taking on more work than we can handle, especially other people’s problems, by trying to save face, and by positively promoting super powers that we do not possess. These poor judgements are often the result of making assumptions about what is expected of us.

Learning assertiveness skills will allow a worker to say ‘No’, ‘Stop!’, and communicate concerns with colleagues, customers and the Company. These skills are essential, and when deadlines are critical, then extra resources and help should always be obtained to ensure the task is completed to the required level of quality.

Being both unable to express our concerns and not allowing other to express their concerns creates ineffective communications and damages teamwork. Unassertive team members can be forced to go with a majority decision, even when they believe it is wrong and dangerous to do so.

Assertiveness is a communication and behavioural style that allows us to express feelings, opinions, concerns, beliefs and needs in a positive and productive manner. When we are assertive we also invite and allow others to assert themselves without feeling threatened, undermined or that we’ve lost face. Speaking one’s mind assertively is not to be confused with aggression. It is about communicating directly, but honestly and appropriately; giving respect to the opinions and needs of others, but not compromising our own standards.

Assertiveness techniques can be learnt and they focus on keeping calm, being rational, using specific examples rather than generalisations, and inviting feedback. Most importantly, any criticisms should be directed at actions and their consequences rather than people and their personalities; this allows others to maintain their dignity, and a productive conclusion to be reached.

In the aviation environment, there are two main types of stress: acute and chronic. Acute stress arises from immediate demands, such as emergencies or working under time pressure. Chronic stress results from long-term life pressures, like family issues or financial problems, which can lower our reaction threshold at work and cause overreactions.

Early signs of stress include personality and mood changes, poor judgment, lack of concentration, and memory issues. Long-term stress symptoms include increased susceptibility to infections, higher use of stimulants, absenteeism, illness, and depression.

It's important to recognize early signs of stress and differentiate between acute and chronic stress. Simple breathing and relaxation techniques can help manage daily stress, but effective communication channels to discuss and rationalize issues are crucial. Social interaction with peers is beneficial. Sleep, diet, and exercise are vital in reducing stress and building resilience. Chronic stress requires lifestyle changes, supported by the company. Therefore, companies should implement employee assistance programs that include stress reduction initiatives.

Working in isolation and only considering one’s own responsibilities can lead to tunnel vision; a partial view, and a lack of awareness of the affect our actions can have on others and the wider task. Such lack of awareness may also result from other human factors, such as stress, fatigue, pressure and distraction.

It is important to build experience throughout our careers, especially concerning the roles and responsibilities of those we work with, and our own place in the wider Team. Developing our foresight is essential in pre-empting the affects our actions may have on others. This is an attitude of professionalism and involves constant questioning “what if …?” Asking others to check our work and challenge our decisions is useful in gaining the relevant experience and expanding our awareness. Vigilance is closely related to situational awareness, and workplace procedures, such as scanning, two-way communication and use of checklists will help to maintain vigilance.

Workplace practices develop over time, through experience, and often under the influence of a specific workplace culture. These practices can be both, good and bad, safe and unsafe; they are referred to as “the way we do things round here” and become Norms. Unfortunately such practices follow unwritten rules or behaviours, which deviate from the required rules, procedures and instructions. These Norms can then be enforced through peer pressure and force of habit. It is important to understand that most Norms have not been designed to meet all circumstances, and therefore are not adequately tested against potential threats.

Rules and procedures should have been designed and tested, and therefore ought to be enforced and followed rigorously. Where workers feel pressure to deviate from a procedure, or work around it, then this information should be fed back so that the procedure can be reviewed and amended, if necessary. Developing assertiveness can allow workers to express their concerns about unsafe Norms, despite peer pressure.