What is the difference between human errors and unsafe acts? Provide an example of each, and briefly tell how each could lead to an injury or illness.

Please comment on another student’s post, describing how the application of one or more of the elements of a safety management system could reduce the risk of an injury or illness occurring from those human errors and unsafe acts.

Please include the name of the person or question to which you are replying in the subject line. For example, “Tom’s response to Susan’s comment.”

ALSO PLEASE REPLY TO ANOTHER STUDENTS COMMENT BELOW WITH A POSITIVE COMMENT RESPONSE 

MICHAEL:

Human errors is when an employee making the wrong decision to do or not to do a step or a task based on the fact they may not have the proper training or work experience.  A good example of this type of an error is when a new employee starts their new job, and has not received proper training.  In my experience, this can happen when the company has a new employee training a brand new employee.How can the new employee have the knowledge and experience to show the brand new employee tasks that may not be spelled out in a manual or a skills enventory checklist.

Unsafe acts are exactly what they say they are.  It is an employee knowing what the risks are, but choose to by pass or overlook certain steps in a procedure.  In my experience, employees that are incentivised to put out more production and get a bigger bonus at the end of the month.  Most people will think they are getting more done when bypassing steps, especially when it may be a safety step in the procedure.  The other employee that it is very common to see perform unsafe acts is the employee that has been on the same job for a long period of time and thinks it is OK to perform unsafe acts because they have been their and know how things get done.  “It is OK if I do it that way because I know this machine inside and out.  It is not OK for you to do it because you don’t know it like I do.”