Karen Klockner

Improving signal passed at danger management in New Zealand rail operations: Combining stabilised approach procedures with risk-triggered commentary driving

The critical examination of driver cognition and information processing is vital to ensuring an effective signal passed at danger (SPAD) prevention strategy. Although this need was identified in KiwiRail’s organisational strategy to reduce signal passed at danger risk, the why and how factors were not clearly described and robustly linked to deliver the necessary effects. With risk-triggered commentary driving programmes gaining recognition as valuable components and activities within the driver competency model, an opportunity to couple risk-triggered commentary driving with stabilised approach methodologies and procedures, adopted from aviation and modified for use on New Zealand’s railway network was subsequently identified. A driver subject matter expert group was formed, a literature review completed, guidance developed and new procedures trialled. This activity provided new opportunities to introduce error-tolerant system design, increase accuracy of driver signal action response and reduce signal passed at danger risk on New Zealand’s National Rail System by adopting and designing bespoke methodologies that support enhanced driver cognition and safe system design.

Strategically Developing a Resilient Safety Culture: Organizational Mindfulness and Mindful Organizing

The idea that an organizational workforce as a collective can have the attribute of being ‘collectively mindful’ points towards a readiness to respond through stable cognitive processes and variability in actions which are needed to maintain system functioning and manage system fluctuations when the unexpected happens. This paper reviews recent theory and research on the concepts of Organizational Mindfulness and Mindful Organizing with a view to imparting understanding on how the collective workforce plays a key role in the management of the unexpected by using the five principles of organizational collective mindfulness. Suggestions for strategically enhancing these organizational mindfulness concepts are discussed to enable enhancement of an organizational resilience safety culture.

Cognitive Failures at Work, Mindfulness, and the Big Five

Cognitive failures at work (or errors in the workplace including blunders and memory lapses), can lead to considerable personal and organisational damage, even damage well beyond national borders in some organisations. Workplace errors may have a personality base; and mindfulness (or mindlessness) also appears to be related to workplace errors generally. Given the importance and cost of errors in the workplace it is of concern that no previous research appears to have addressed the relationships between cognitive failures at work, personality and mindfulness together. We aimed to address this gap. We administered the Cognitive Failures Questionnaire, the Mindful Attention Awareness Scale (MAAS) and the Big Five International Personality Item Pool 50-item questionnaire (IPIP) to a sample of 92 Australian-based employees from a variety of organisations. Our results showed workplace errors (including lapses in general memory, blunders, distractions and recall of names) were related to lower levels of mindfulness and to lower levels of emotional stability (that is, the other end of the neuroticism- emotional stability continuum). Extraversion was associated with not making blunders, but the other three factors of the Big Five (Openness, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness) were not found to be related to workplace errors. These results demonstrate important relationships between mindfulness and workplace errors; and personality (mainly Neuroticism- Emotional Stability) and workplace errors. Giving special attention to mindfulness training and to effective mental health training in organisations is recommended, especially where lapses in attention or workplace actions can lead to costly personal and organisational mistakes.