What HOP is
Human and Organizational Performance
HOP is a way of looking at safety that starts with how work really gets done. Most days, crews make work go right, often by adjusting to gaps in plans, tools, and conditions. HOP asks leaders to make work safer to do, and to make sure that when something does go wrong, it is less likely to hurt someone.
Five core principles
- Error is normal. Even skilled, careful, experienced people make mistakes. Expect it, and set up the work so a slip doesn’t turn into an injury.
- Blame fixes nothing. Blaming or punishing someone after an event can feel like action, but it doesn’t change the conditions that set them up to fail. It also teaches people to stay quiet, so problems stay hidden.
- Context drives behavior. What people do is shaped by the systems, tools, procedures, conditions, schedules, and pressures around them. People usually do what makes sense to them at the time. To change behavior, change the context.
- Learning and improving is vital. Don’t wait for an injury to learn. Normal work shows where trouble could start: the workarounds, the jobs that are harder than they should be, and the close calls.
- How leaders respond to failure matters. When something goes wrong, a leader’s first reaction tells the crew whether it is safe to speak up. Respond with curiosity and support, and people will keep telling you what is really happening.
What it looks like on the job
- Ask the crew what’s harder than it should be. Fix what you can, and tell them what you fixed and what you couldn’t.
- Learn from normal work. Walk the job, watch how the task is really done, and compare it with the plan or procedure.
- Build defenses that let people fail safely: guards, barriers, lockout/tagout, fall protection, spotters, and checks that catch a mistake before it hurts someone.
- Review incidents and close calls for what failed in the system, such as planning, equipment, staffing, procedures, or time pressure, not for who to blame.
- Back stop-work authority. Anyone can stop a job that doesn’t look right, with no pushback, and leaders thank them for it.
- Thank people who report mistakes and close calls. A report is information you can use.
Questions for the crew
- What part of today’s job is harder than it should be?
- Where could a small mistake today lead to a serious injury?
- What would make this job safer or easier to do right?
Where these ideas come from
The five principles above are based on Todd Conklin’s book The 5 Principles of Human Performance (2019). The U.S. Department of Energy’s Human Performance Improvement Handbook (DOE-HDBK-1028-2009) starts from a similar idea; its first principle is “People are fallible, and even the best people make mistakes.”
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