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the beacon

art of work

  december 2019 · issue 3

person in focus
robert jan de boer  
associate consultant

Tell us a bit about your background.

I was trained as an aerospace engineer at Delft University of Technology and majored in man-machine systems. I actually put some colleague students in a flight simulator and shook them around to test the sensitivity of their vestibular organs – luckily, I was aiming at the lower end to find the perception thresholds, so no one got motion sickness. However, I did make a mistake in the programming of the simulator during a test run by a factor of ten, so I didn’t only shake the simulator but actually got the whole building to rock! Despite this I managed to graduate cum laude in 1988.

After gaining experience in production management at Unilever and consulting at A.T. Kearney I joined Fokker Technologies in 1999. Here I was asked to develop the Program Management methodology for Fokker in compliance with aerospace requirements, as a prerequisite for Fokker to participate on the A380 program. This led to my appointment as the Director of Engineering in 2002. In this role I supported and guided an increasing number of engineers (up to 300) occupied in a large number of new design projects across the globe, including Romania, Dallas, Los Angeles and Seattle. I have been acquainted with Art of Work through Sidney, and have worked through the UK office on a major project for Shell. This included two visits to an oil rig in the North Sea - an awesome experience!

What sparked your interest in working in human performance?

My experiences at Fokker inspired my current scientific interest in team collaboration, culminating in a PhD (achieved in May 2012) at the Delft University of Technology. Basically, I want to know how we can improve the collaboration amongst professionals. From 2009 to 2018 I was appointed as a professor of Aviation Engineering at the Amsterdam University of Applied Science. In this role I executed research in the field of aviation, with a focus on Human Factors & safety, MRO process improvement and condition monitoring. Currently I am the Director of the Amsterdam Campus for Northumbria University. In this newly created role I am responsible for the start-up of the Amsterdam campus and its growth to ~ 500 students of all levels (doctorates, masters, bachelors) in the coming few years. I remain active in research and consulting as well. 
 
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video playlists
art of work youtube channel
Our enabling people YouTube channel is a space for you to explore ideas the peak your interest. We have created playlists so you can delve into the topic of your choice.

letter from the director
kelvin genn

director of disruption

Christmas and the New Year lead us to a natural point of reflection for the year that was, and the one that will be. This year we continued our efforts to inspire and build better work experiences for our partner organisations by enabling people. 
In my experience over the past decade, safety has focussed predominantly on getting people to do the right thing (procedural compliance), where safety is a duty that is owed to themselves and their workmates. In pursuing this agenda, I have seen first-hand practices of leadership engaging in “visible leadership”  by executing that transactional accountability resulting in significant injustice delivered in the name of safe work; zero tolerance for error. 

For 2020, I would encourage business and safety leaders to explore more deeply the third principle of enabling people, ethical responsibility. For leaders, this is a responsibility that extends beyond a given safety event transaction, to the custodianship for the work being done and the organisation’s stewardship to care for the families and communities that it engages with.

In 2020 I hope that we can create and sustain restorative just culture as the experiential environment for the organisations we all serve, making the needs of our people the centre of our efforts. We need to dampen the demands of the lawyers and governance voices to protect the leadership, where the system takes precedence over the needs of people, and thereby the opportunities to engage and learn.  By putting people and their wellbeing first, we will build trust, engagement and resilience, diminishing the need for protective efforts for the leadership.

new team member
nicki crayfourd

director of enterprise
Nicki Crayfourd is joining our team to lead business development, client engagement and marketing in the UK.  Nicki brings a wealth of international management experience, specialising in health and safety, food safety and wellbeing.  Having held senior roles across marketing, client services, supply chain and HR earlier in her career, she spent the last decade as global Director of Health, Safety and Environment / Sustainability with Compass Group PLC, the leading foodservice and facilities organisation.  
 
Looking to swap a hectic corporate life for a better work-life balance, Nicki is combining her role with us, with her passion for executive coaching by continuing her studies in behaviour change coaching.  Nicki says “I am really excited to join the Art of Work team and make the jump from client to a team member!  I love the ‘safety differently’ philosophy and innovative approach to colleague engagement. I know from personal experience just how powerful this approach can be and I am keen to get started!“

Nicki joins us in January 2020.  You can get in touch with her at nicki@artofwork.solutions.

activity based learning
2020 announcement

Art of Work is proud to announce that we have acquired the rights to deliver a suite of three Activity Based Learning programs through our partnership with the Real Learning Experience after trialling them successfully in 2019. The programs have been specifically selected for their ability to accelerate and embed the principles of Enabling People in an activity-based setting.

Too often there is a significant time gap between demonstrated behaviours, and the outcome of the behaviours, which dilutes or nullifies learning, creating a “Learning Horizon” ( Peter Senge).
The benefit of an activity-based experiential learning program ( besides being high energy and fun), is that this gap gets closed, and learning and commitment to change takes place in real-time.

Attendance of an Activity Based Learning public workshop is $ 695 pp, and in order to help you with your 2020 planning, we would like to offer you an early bird rate of $ 295 pp for bookings made before 31 January 2020.
Similarly, as a special thank you for being part of our community we would like to encourage team attendance, and have a "Pay for three, get one free" arrangement for all bookings, whether made  before or after 31 January 2020.
more information

qube moorebank case study

art of work insight
Art of Work was engaged by Qube to assist with the human factors documentation required to meet regulatory requirements for the  Moorebank Intermodal Terminal. This project, set to become Australia’s largest logistics development, will feature a dedicated rail connection from Port Botany and incorporate the latest automated freight handling technology, including automated gantry cranes and driverless straddle carriers.
The first warehouse was completed in 2018 and the terminal commenced operations in manual mode in October 2019.

An additional rail terminal servicing regional NSW and interstate is due for completion in late 2020. The total 850,000sqm of warehousing will be delivered in stages over a 10 year period, based on demand and uptake.

 Art of Work was engaged by Qube to conduct a Human Factors Assessment of the rail operations of the Moorebank Intermodal Terminal. The aims of the assessment were to:

  •  Identify potential safety risks from a human factors viewpoint
  • Make recommendations to improve the resilience of the control system
  • Assist Qube in gaining regulatory approval

 For this, a collective improvements program was run early in the design process to facilitate collaboration between typical end users and system designers to identify and address issues.

When the control room was being commissioned, Art of Work took simultaneous video and made observations from the viewpoint of the control room operator and loco driver to identify potential sources of error.

The design of the control room and the workload of the controller was assessed under various combinations of operation.

Art of Work also helped review and update Qube’s safety management system including the existing risk registers to accommodate the changing scope of operations and meet regulatory approval..
 

Belinda Flynn, General Manager for Health Safety and Environment at Qube gives us some insight into the project and her experience.

Moorebank was a complex and time-critical project. What was the biggest challenge you faced?

The number of stakeholders that are involved in this project is a big challenge. We need to make sure that we make our legal obligations, client obligations and meet community expectations from an environmental and sustainability perspective.

We have obligations from different stakeholders and it is important that we adhere to those obligations and deliver the project on time and on budget.

Is there a change in how you approach safety when there is an increase in the level of automation?

Definitely - automation requires a different way of thinking about safety. You have to think about the risk of the people interacting with the automation. People can become complacent if they think that machines will ensure their safety. It is important that you don’t take away accountability and responsibility for safety from the people. Conducting a human factor assessment when you automate something can make you understand what that automation means for the people - does that make it more difficult/challenging or easier, does it allow them to override the system? You need to address these questions as automation is a very different way of thinking compared to the normal human-machine interface.
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enabling wellbeing 2019 update

pete jensen

Commencing in Melbourne in June, the Enabling Wellbeing Master Class series has seen master classes delivered in major Australia cities as well as the UK and New Zealand with participants representing multiple and diverse industries and roles.Whilst many participants are conversant with the need to create a deeper and more complete understanding of the scope of Wellbeing, some common themes emerged across all the workshops:

How does one write a robust wellbeing strategy?

  • How does one create a compelling case for the board
  • What would be required to integrate whole-istic wellbeing into the way work is designed?
  • What are the positives we could measure as we shift out of the deficit mindset?
  • How does one measure the positive indicators and integrate this with existing systems?
  • How do we provide wellbeing environment that is specific to individual needs rather than take a broad approach?
read more

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