Operational Improvement Consultancy

How to improve efficiency and safety of your organization.

Human Performance Excellence Program
Human Performance Excellence Program is designed to build high performing personnel to manage defenses effectively and equip/prepare to face challenges, and organization to become more efficient and safer. HPE Program applies to all industries (O&G, construction, mining, refinery, healthcare, transportation etc), university/college and school etc. HPE consulting methodology, focuses on the three interdependent aspects of human performance that contribute to organizational culture and operations:
Leadership
Operational Process
Team Behaviors

These focus areas assist to optimize human performance, avoid, trap, and mitigate the main sources of systematic error; and ensure operational reliability that leads to safe, efficient, quality-controlled, and profitable operations Adhere to all organization’s guidelines.

NK Res2 embeds our coaches’ elite military
experience and training into high-reliability
companies to assist crews to manage change,
optimize processes and minimize risk. We can help
you improve performance and efficiency to positively
affect your bottom line.

HOW CREW RESOURCE MANAGEMENT (CRM) HELPS TO IMPROVE EFFICIENCY AND SAFETY

Crew Resource Management describes the process of effective coordination among crew members which enables them to use all available resources to efficiently and safely accomplish the mission or task.
CRM also refers to identifying and managing the conditions and human factors that lead toward human error. Human factors, sometimes referred to as “performance shaping factors”, are applicable to all phases of operations and are specifically addressed in this guide.

“The history of Crew Resource Management began upon the aviation industry's surrender to two fundamental and incontrovertible realities:

• Human beings are fallible and will inevitably make mistakes
• Human beings are individuals, with a rich diversity of personalities, cultural backgrounds, talents and skills. Whether by nature or nurture, some are better at communicating, some better at performing under stress.

In aviation and in medicine, these quintessentially human traits collide against a professional environment in which adverse events are starkly and objectively measured: people get hurt or killed. Safety improvement initiatives based on reducing human error demand a standardized, scalable, and sustainable method for preventing un-standard human factors from causing adverse events. Simply put, Crew Resource Management methods help keep the traits that make each person wonderfully unique from causing harm to others.
("Crew Resource Management: From Patient Safety to High Reliability" by Safer Healthcare CEO and author, David Marshall)

Several critical skills and behaviors have been identified which enhance crew coordination. These skills, also referred to as “non-technical skills” include:

• Leadership/Teamwork
• Task Analysis
• Adaptability/Flexibility
• Communication
• Assertiveness
• Situational Awareness
• Decision Making

CRM Critical Skills Defined:

Leadership: The ability to direct and coordinate the activities of crew members and to encourage the crew to work together as a team.

Task Analysis: The ability to develop short-term, long-term, and contingency plans and to coordinate, allocate, and monitor crew and equipment resources.

Adaptability/Flexibility: The ability to alter a course of action based on new information, maintain constructive behavior under pressure, and adapt to internal and external environmental changes.

Communication: The ability to clearly and accurately send and receive information, instructions, or commands; and provide useful feedback.

Assertiveness: The willingness to actively participate, state, and maintain a position until convinced by the facts that other options are better.

Situational Awareness: The degree of accuracy by which one’s perception of the current environment mirrors reality.

Decision Making: The ability to choose a course of action using logical and sound judgment based on the available information.

Why is Crew Resource Management Important?

Good CRM can increase crew effectiveness by:
• Minimizing crew-preventable errors
• Maximizing crew resources
• Optimizing risk management

CREATING SAFETY CHAMPION (SM)

Quality Safety Edge has found that the three elements of creating Safety Champions SM and implementing Values-Based Safety™ are education, involvement, and support.
Creating Safety Champions SM is not always easy. Sometimes they come from the most unlikely candidates. Perhaps they were the ones who resisted the behavioral safety process in the beginning, or they adopted a “wait and see” attitude. Whatever their reasons, they have now become Champions of the process. But how did they get that way?
Quality Safety Edge has identified the key steps in creating such Safety Champions SM.

Education
First, you must get their attention. Education helps them understand that unsafe acts cause injuries and what their role is in preventing accidents.
Involvement

Second, they must be actively involved in creating a proactive process to help prevent injuries.
Support

Finally, when employees manage the process and coordinate management support, everyone wins through a safer workplace!

CHALLENGES IN AN ORGANIZATION

There are a few challenges an organization will face if the development and growth of the people in the company are not properly addressed, which include:

Expectations gap – Unclear and misinterpreted of expectation from both the management and employees will lead to low productivity and morale among them. On the other hand, an engaged employee will have greater job satisfaction and loyalty, which will lead to the improvement of a company's retention rate.

Skills gap - The lack of required skills and competencies to produce highly effective and productive talents. When we neglect the skills development of our employees, we are at risk of getting left behind. It is known that companies with highly engages employees perform as much as 3.5 times better. Thus, the success of our business and employees is an all-encompassing benefit of introducing an effective and comprehensive talent development plan.

Cultural gap - Cultural misalignment between the organization and talents can lead to a lack of ownership and sense of belonging among the talents in the organization. This negative work culture can have a detrimental effect on the overall work environment. When the employees are aligned with the company direction, we can maintain high levels of team morale. Investing in an effective talent development program is investing in a harmonious work environment.

Service gap - The quality of service offered to customers is a primary focus in everyday business activities for all companies. When a company does not strategically grow and develop their employees, it is at risk of poor customer service from unmotivated employees. The motivation, enthusiasm and commitment shown by engaged employees makes all the difference to customer service success.

‘Soft’ skills the key to future safety
By staff writers -
Nov 9, 2018
1140
Training in non-technical skills needed to move out of the classroom, and become integrated with flight training, EBT Foundation director Allison McDonald said.
Aviation training needs to eliminate the distinction between technical and non-technical (so-called ‘soft’) skills if safety is to improve, the country’s leading aviation psychology conference heard this week.
Speaking to the PACDEFF CRM and Aviation Human Factors Conference, director of the Evidence Based Training (EBT) Foundation, Allison McDonald, said the improved safety record of airline transport meant the fewer accidents that still occurred required different skills if pilots were to avoid or minimise them.
She noted that since 1998 there had been a 95 per cent reduction in the fatal accident rate in air transport, along with a 70 per cent reduction in the rate of hull losses. ‘As aircraft technology and reliability improves, we are likely to see fewer failures that are predictable, with procedures to cover them. The events we are likely to see are more likely to be unpredictable,’ she said.
The traditional training model did not produce the skills required to cope with these situations, she said. In addition, maintaining manual skills in highly automated systems with few reversions to manual mode had become an issue.
‘For years we have relied on experienced aviation professionals to manage training and operations. This has served us well but in the face of these new challenges we can no longer afford to rely on expertise and intuition.
The EBT Foundation had asked airline trainers and checkers to reflect on the elements of an excellent pilot. ‘What’s interesting is regardless of airline, culture or region of the world, we tend to see similar responses,’ McDonald said.
‘They think about somebody who is an effective communicator, someone who prioritises tasks well, someone who remains calm, someone able to analyse and think ahead, someone who’s got good extensive knowledge, someone who involves others and works well with other people.’
‘When we look at significant challenging “black swan events” we see similar types of behaviours, when crews have managed these successfully.’
‘If these behaviours and underlying areas of competence are so pervasive in effective performance, shouldn’t they be the basis of what we’re training?’
‘In this framework, all skills are of equal importance,’ McDonald said. ‘There’s no categorisation into technical and non-technical. If these are the competencies that contribute to competence these should form the basis of pilot training.’
McDonald acknowledged that the so-called non-technical skills had often been taught in the abstract, sometimes as a PowerPoint presentation, rather than being linked to the challenges crews faced in operations.
Non-technical skills needed to be properly integrated into all forms of training, using scenario-based exercises, rather than repetitive drills, she said.
ICAO published the evidence-based training concept in 2013 and more than 50 airlines are engaged in EBT implementation.
‘It means learning through exposure to varied and challenging situations, stretching people’s performance beyond their comfort zone, providing good feedback and encouraging reflection, and ultimately learning how to manage stress and pressure.’