Reviewing Non-Technical Skills & Organizational Learning: A Comparative Analysis of Critical Safety Factors within the UK’s High-Risk Industries

Accidents in high-tech organisations are often triggered by a concatenation of human and system anomalies and errors, proving destructive to life, property and the environment. Urgent attention is required to minimize such events by training workers in high-risk organisations and ensuring adequate levels of Non-Technical Skills (NTS) training to counter related risks within the spectrum of their daily tasks. Organisational learning becomes equally relevant when industries are inclined towards becoming learning organisations by encouraging and promoting learning to manage safety. A comparative assessment is drawn by examining current practices in aviation and in the oil and gas sectors. The online survey was used to gather primary data, as well as interviewing 15 safety experts across the three sectors and another 15 safety experts recruited as focus groups to establish if NTS and organisational learning are used in safety management. Our sample comprised health and safety experts from the nuclear (n = 124, 54%), aviation (n = 59, 25%), and oil and gas sectors (n = 49, 21%). Findings revealed that the nuclear sector has not fully and officially acknowledged the use of NTS to train workers. The nuclear sector should look inwardly at how safety is managed since there is limited evidence of formal knowledge or techniques for transferring lessons to staff on NTS, which has proven to be a major critical “ingredient” in safety management in high-risk organisations.