Imagine facing SIRE 2.0 – or any other vetting regime – with confidence instead of stress.
Safety Delta helps your crew do that and successfully handle inspections. This tool encourages you to make safety a natural part of ‘who you are’ and ‘how you do things,’ so you’re not just fulfilling requirements – but going beyond compliance.
Let’s discuss the eight key principles that guide OCIMF’s approach to human factors, and how Safety Delta helps you align with them. You’ll also find a lot of practical tools in the Safety Delta Learning Library.
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1 / People will make mistakes
No matter how experienced you are, working on board comes with its share of unexpected challenges. Both long-serving and new crew members can slip up. Even the most experienced seafarers can overlook critical issues due to busy schedules, overconfidence, or complacency.
As a proactive approach to this, Safety Delta fosters a learning culture where crew members share safety-related information, and a backup culture where everyone looks out for each other. The Safety Delta cycle also allows turning experiences into new learnings, and learnings into new safety routines.
2 / People’s actions are rarely malicious and usually make sense to them at the time
Often, you need to make sensible adjustments based on what’s happening around you. Safety Delta helps you make sound decisions – whether intuitive or analytical – by dealing with the criticality level, urgency, and risks using your team’s input and experience. This is why human factors are so important in situations outside of your routine jobs on board.
Safety Delta also stimulates an open culture where it’s safe for crew members to share ideas and opinions. It also promotes a just culture, where the crew do not fear to report errors because they focus on learning rather than pointing fingers.
3 / Mistakes are typically due to conditions and systems that make work difficult
Mistakes often happen because of things that make our jobs harder, like flawed systems, poorly designed equipment, or outdated procedures. By sharing your knowledge and experience, your crew can spot potential problems and avoid them.
Safety Delta helps you create a just culture on board, where mistakes are viewed mainly as a result of unresolved issues like poor work processes, unreliable equipment, or bad management, instead of the crew who ‘made’ the mistake. Safety Delta also suggests ways to make your workplace safer by addressing time pressure, fatigue and stress, mental health, and the availability of appropriate PPE.
4 / Understanding the condition in which mistakes happen helps us prevent or correct them
You and your crew know your work conditions on board better than anyone else. Safety Delta helps you reflect on your perceptions of these conditions and prevent mistakes before anything goes wrong.
The Safety Delta Learning Library covers skills and behaviours to sharpen your safety awareness and deal with emerging situations. They include situational awareness, hazard identification, seeking and sharing insight, stopping unsafe acts, and team communication.
Here are some tools from the library that you can use:
5 / People know the most about their work and are key to any solution
We often hear that human error is the main cause of incidents at sea. But let’s be real – working on board is tough. You have to deal with complex tasks in challenging conditions, with varying levels of expertise and experience among your team. Safety Delta recognises that crew members are still at the centre of a safe work environment. It provides tools to help you develop your safety behaviours and skills so you can make appropriate judgements in safety-critical situations.
Safety Delta also encourages teamwork and team communication, so that you – the ones who are at the front line of jobs – can better handle changes at work, new hazards and risks, and other safety matters.
6 / Workplace, tools, and activities can be designed to reduce mistakes and manage risks better
Your workplace affects your physical, mental, and emotional states, and in turn, your performance. Likewise, a single point of failure on any equipment may pose a serious risk. That’s why Safety Delta encourages you to not just develop your skills, but also look for ways to improve your workplace, tools, and activities so you can eliminate or minimise risks.
Safety Delta directs you to identify areas where equipment design and controls can be improved. It also encourages you to treat risk assessment as not just a compliance task, but a proactive process that all crew members take seriously.
7 / Leaders contribute to shaping conditions that influence what people do
Leaders shape the culture on board and influence how crew members interact, make decisions, perform tasks, and achieve goals. Safety Delta inspires leaders to actively engage in safety performance so they can motivate the crew to make safety a natural part of their mindset and daily actions.
The Safety Delta Learning Library covers important leadership skills. For instance, active listening helps leaders understand and address issues correctly. Giving appreciative feedback motivates the crew to repeat good work and safety behaviours. Giving clear instructions ensures jobs are done safely and properly. And by encouraging the crew to speak up, leaders can increase the crew’s engagement level.
Here are some tools from the library that you can use:
8 / It matters how leaders respond when things go wrong and that they take the opportunity to learn
Leaders are in a good position to improve safety on board by motivating the crew to change their behaviours and come up with safer ways to do their jobs. But how leaders do it spells the difference between a motivated and a defensive crew.
The Safety Delta Learning Library covers topics that help leaders motivate the crew effectively. It provides tools and strategies to give corrective feedback in a positive and structured way, provide coaching to help sharpen safety skills, and conduct work debriefs to capture learning opportunities. The Safety Delta cycle also provides leaders with a clear picture of the areas they need to focus on, discuss, and develop.
Here are some tools from the library that you can use:
Safety Delta familiarisation webinar
Want to learn more about the Safety Delta concept and how to conduct the Diagnosis stage? Register for our free familiarisation webinar here.
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