Larry Wilson

Although most safety professionals are familiar with the hierarchy of controls, many still think that the last line of defense is personal protective equipment. Unfortunately, this common perspective is inaccurate. PPE is not the last line of defense. In fact, the doctor tested you for the last line of defense shortly after you were born. You have been using them all your life—except for those times when you or your employees were seriously injured. How does this impact the incident trajectory in the bowtie model? And more importantly, how can you and your employees ensure they get the benefits of the last line of defense to prevent (the majority of) SIFs? This session will engage participants in a conversation about what really is the last line of defense and why people do not always get the benefit of it. Participants will also take away specific techniques to enable them to prevent serious injuries and fatalities everywhere.

While there are various approaches to eliminating or minimizing human error (HOP, human factors, ergonomics, etc.) there is little offered at an organizational level to enhance performance—whereas in sports there has been a combined focus for years. For example, in tennis, reducing unforced errors (double faults) improves performance but it doesn’t make you serve the ball faster or more accurately. This session explores how critical error reduction techniques not only reduce performance errors but gives real-life examples of how learning them well has improved the performance of Olympians, hockey players and basketball players. These techniques were then taken to high-reliability organizations and significant improvements of 40–50% in KPIs such as quality, production efficiency and customer satisfaction were tracked and measured. In addition, engagement levels improved because people are more motivated to be successful than to prevent injuries—promotions don’t come from not getting hurt at work. Join Larry in a discussion about how you, your employees and your organization can benefit from going beyond high-reliability and the current “state of the art” to enhanced performance and improved engagement.