Human Performance Training Course

This is a one-day human performance training course facilitated by Jo Gillespie, an experienced and knowledgeable instructor originally from the aviation industry but more recently engaged with the healthcare sector. Jo has taken the hard human performance lessons learned in aviation and repackaged them for a healthcare audience. The course is also available as a ‘train-the-trainer’ option over three days.

The course focuses on five fundamental principles of human performance with an emphasis on the first principle that people’s performance is shaped by their motivation, capabilities and limitations. This leads to an examination of the two basic capability channels that humans use to get things done, and the strengths and weaknesses of each.

In the train-the-trainer format participants have the opportunity to build their own live presentation skills, alongside their knowledge of human performance. This course includes the development of instructional techniques, the more advanced applications of MS PowerPoint and a range of other teaching media.

Course aim

The course aims to deliver an understanding of how and why people do what they do in order to make successful, safe outcomes more likely. It also supports the functions of incident investigation by giving insight into human behaviour.

Who should attend?

The course is especially appropriate for middle-managers, team-leaders and supervisors; those responsible for the design and oversight of safety critical tasks, procedures and equipment. It is also of value to trained incident investigators.

Course content

• Five principles of human performance expressing in simple terms how and why people perform in the ways that they do. These principles provide the framework upon which the rest of the course is built.
• What motivates people in their actions, including a review of Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs. Crucially, humans are highly motivated to complete a task once it has been started, which can lead to ‘pressing on’ even when circumstances suggest we shouldn’t.
• Two basic capability channels through which humans deliver almost everything they do – cognitive capabilities using conscious thought and learned capabilities based on experience and practice. Humans have extraordinary capacity to perform using these two channels but both are vulnerable to unpredictable and potentially catastrophic failure. The course explores how these failures occur and what can be done to prevent them or mitigate the consequences.
• People rarely set out to fail and they generally do what makes sense to them at the time. This is an important factor in the investigation of safety incidents and avoiding the undue application of hindsight.
• Decisions and consequential actions can be strongly influenced by the working environment and even more so by other people. The course examines how this happens and offers strategies to build resilience and confidence in decision making.
• Procedural non-compliance – why people sometimes deviate from established processes and procedures.
• For the train-the-trainer option the course includes instructional technique and tips for teaching presentation media and style. Participants will compose and deliver several short teaching presentations, both individually and in groups.