SH311: 3. Don’t Wait - Learn From Everyday Work Using HOP Principles

This episode explores Human and Organizational Performance (HOP), an approach to safety that starts with the idea that people will always make mistakes, so we should focus on understanding why decisions made sense at the time rather than simply blaming individuals. Drawing on a workshop from the Human Factors in Diving Conference in Vis, Croatia, we look at how HOP can be applied to diving by considering the conditions, information, equipment and pressures people were working with. Using a hypothetical case of a dive boat leaving two divers behind, we compare traditional incident investigations with a more curious approach that looks at the wider context, including workload, fatigue, schedules, group dynamics and the pressures faced by the crew. Most importantly, HOP encourages us to learn from everyday work rather than waiting for something to go wrong, asking what makes things succeed and where risks might be hiding. The episode considers how regular debriefs and humble inquiry can help teams learn, improve and build safer systems without relying on blame.

Original blog: https://www.thehumandiver.com/post/steve-smith-applying-hop-lucky-or-good

Tags: THD-English| THD-Education & Content Type| THD-HFiD-Conference