Non-Technical Skill Education to Prevent Accidents

The number of occupational accidents by younger workers is recently increasing. Process accidents are also partly caused by their individual behavior and insufficient non-technical skill. Analysis of the accident investigations indicated that third or fourth reason of the accidents were communication concerns.

The causes were for example, “I wish I had said a word”, “I should have talked to you before I did some-thing.” and so on. Similar organizational accident has repeatedly occurred. Generally, case method and gaming simulation are effective to increase the openness of information. But, conventional training could not contribute to an improvement on non-technical skill caused troubles. Because trainings on skills and knowledge like case study cannot relate to communication issue.

To overcome these human factor troubles regarding communication, the implementation of non-technical skill education is required. We need implementation of training which can notice deeply the importance of communication and behavioral characteristics of the workers.

For these purposes, gaming simulations were developed and newly adopted to safety training program

which executes in AGC Asahi Glass company. Training program consists of experience exercises based on virtual state that is commonly conceptualized for individual problems in each workplace. Purposes of new training are to have workers notice deeply importance of voice over, appropriate authority gradient, courage to bring up.

In addition to overcoming behavior causes accidents, behavioral assessment tests have been introduced to awaken them their behavioral characteristics. Setting the goal as　”knowing yourself leads to decrease accidents”, awareness of behavioral characteristics of the workers have been recognized by behavioral assessment tests. Bias often leads to misjudgments when receiving and understanding information. I developed a questionnaire method which measures the person’s degree of bias. By becoming aware of the bias, I thought that the number of accidents will decrease so I constructed this new education program　

12 year safety training has accomplished to decrease the number of accidents and the outstanding results has been achieved by behavioral assessment tests, which drastically decreased to below than

a third of the number of previous occupational accidents. And keeping awareness into workers contributes to furthermore prevent process accidents and occupational accidents. It is important to make workers own humility enough to recognize their characteristics and to recheck their action prior to start the task.

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Keywords: non-technical skills, situation awareness, behavioral assessment tests, gaming simulation